In Bologna, the crazy world of Martin Parr with "Short & Sweet"

The Civic Archaeological Museum of Bologna presents from September 12, 2024 to January 6, 2025 the exhibition Martin Parr. Short & Sweet curated by Martin Parr (1952) himself and produced by 24 ORE Cultura - Gruppo 24 ORE in collaboration with the Civic Archaeological Museum of Bologna’s Museum Sector and Magnum Photos, under the patronage of the Municipality of Bologna. The exhibition presents more than sixty photographs selected by the photographer and placed side by side with the body of images from the Common Sense series, to retrace, also through an interview by photography historian and critic Roberta Valtorta, the career of one of the most famous photographers of our time. Gruppo Hera is a sponsor of the exhibition.

The exhibition opens with The Non-Conformists series, images taken from 1975 to 1980. For the project, the author moves from the London metropolis to the Yorkshire suburbs, documenting daily events he witnesses, particularly those of the Non-Conformists. Martin photographs both his surroundings and the blue-collar lives of laborers, miners, farmers, devotees, gamekeepers, pigeon fanciers and “husbands taken by the nose,” producing a historical document that defines the independent character of northern England from state Anglicism. The exhibition continues with the last black-and-white project developed by Parr, Bad Weather, made in the late 1970s and early 1980s and published in 1982. The idea was to create a work focused on a British obsession. Using an underwater camera, Parr casts himself under typical British weather conditions: downpours, drizzle, snowstorms documented strictly between England and Ireland. The series combines expressions and reactions of people who live constantly enduring biting temperatures and dank weather.

The first color project is The Last Resort made between 1982 and 1985, a bitterly ironic reportage conducted by the photographer on the beaches of Brighton, a seaside suburb of Liverpool, in the mid-1980s. Seen through his lens, what should have appeared as a summer resort takes on the air of an industrial zone. In The Last Resort, Parr evokes his nostalgia for the 1960s, creating the first example of a ruthless and lucid reportage on the end of a world and its values, as well as the advent of a new consumerist conception of life, the decadence of the society of affluence and consumption. The installation Common Sense remains on the same register: 250 A3 photographs, selected from the 350 exhibited in the 1999 exhibition of the same name, will be on view at the Museo Civico Archeologico in Bologna, offering a study of mass consumption and the culture of waste, particularly Western and European. The series follows up on the artist’s obsessive visual search for all that is vulgar, out of tune, and absurd. The dynamic shots and compositions, made up of bold juxtapositions and heavily kitschy objects, are shot from unusual angles, with close-up shots and using unusual perspectives, creating shots that arouse interest. Fundamental becomes the attention to detail, through which Parr is able to capture the distinctive elements of a place or situation, and thus ultimately of the culture and society he is depicting. For the exhibition Short & Sweet, Common Sense is presented as an accumulation of brightly colored images, printed cheaply on A3 paper with a color Xerox machine and repurposed in space in an original order.

In the 1990s the gaze turns to the rest of the world and the strange universe of mass tourism. The Small World series, made between 1989 and 2008, is once again about the photojournalist’s willingness to take in many of the most frequented and famous sites, showing the difference between the idealized mythology of the place and the reality despoiled by the tourist’s “use” of it. In this series, the author follows in the footsteps of the average tourist and attempts to reveal the great travesty of travel, which is a leisure activity made possible only as a result of the development of large aircraft and low-cost airlines. With tourism Martin Parr presents a cruel mirror, standardized to the point of absurdity: the world of tourism increasingly resembles a watered-down, homogenized dream whose ultimate model would be Las Vegas.

Along with tourism is the theme of dance with the series Everybody Dance Now made between 1986 and 2018. According to Parr, dance is probably the most democratic form of expression. He combines the two arts in this research in which, from São Paulo, Brazil, to the Scottish islands, he has photographed a variety of dance types for more than 30 years. The work is a study of bodies, their proportions and skin, movements, different clothing, footwear, make-up, and expressions of faces in that particular leisure activity, at once natural and cultural, which for all is dancing. An insane energy emerges from her shots, where the collective body manifests itself without reserve or modesty. England has always been Martin Parr’s favorite subject. His many comic, dogmatic, affectionately satirical and colorful photographic series document what it means to be English today.

With the recent series Establishment, made between 2010 and 2016, he continues the project of photographing the British establishment by making the obvious surprising, reinventing clichés of “Englishness,” turning them into provocative revelations. The research highlights social conventions that are repeated over time, behaviors analyzed down to the smallest gestures, clothing, expressions, looks, small obsessions, and traditions expressed in furnishings and objects. It continues with a subject with which Parr has always grappled, the beach. The 2013 series Life’s a Beach shows shots from beaches around the world, in a kaleidoscope of imagery of the unclothed body and its showing in public. Attentive to costume, social conventions and the rules of appearance that influence the lives of those living in the globalized world, Martin Parr also observes fashion in its various meanings, moving away from the conventional glamour associated with the genre, but rather always insisting on a humorous and satirical approach. For many years he has photographed in Europe, the United States, Africa and Asia not only the sometimes exaggerated or absurd clothes and accessories, but also the postures and expressions.

“Usually you’re told to take pictures only when the light is good and the sun is out,” the author says, “and I liked the idea of taking pictures only in bad weather, as a way of subverting traditional rules.”

In Bologna, the crazy world of Martin Parr with "Short & Sweet"

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