Martin Parr Exhibition

Martin Parr Exhibiton/ Own work


During the Easter holidays I visited the Martin Parr exhibition a the Hepworth gallery in Wakefield. Visiting this exhibition was a great experience and I felt I was able to take a lot from seeing Parr's work actually in an exhibition as appose to just on a computer screen or in a book. As I have mentioned previously within my research for this major project, Parr's work is something which is of great influence to me and my own work.

My work from my minor project focused heavily on bright saturated colours much like that of Parr's. At the moment in my major project, I have been torn between the use of colour or black and white. It was therefore really useful to see a range of Parr's work dating right from the earliest of his career to now. 

The exhibition started with very old black and white documentary prints from the early years of his interest in photography. The images consisted of documentation of a church he was familiar with in his own life and other simple ideas of documentary work such as these. Evidently Parr was documenting whatever he could, simply for his own personal enjoyment. What I enjoyed about this particular work was that it was so different from the work I am personally familiar with and very different to the work Parr is really known for. It was brilliant to be able to see where he started and see how his style has changed through the years up to the work he is producing now.

The next work being exhibited focused heavily on probably his most famous work, from the 1980's or 'Thatcher period' as some refer to it as. Several pieces are on show from Parr's project, 'Last resort' where he documented Brighton beach. The images focus heavily upon the people here as appose to the area or and landscapes, which I felt was much like the work I have been producing; It wouldn't be what it is without the people who are in the images.

This particular work wasn't taken too lightly by some people at the time as it was said that it quite shockingly exposed working class people, in an unfair way. Parr's work isn't just about simply documenting people, a lot of his work focus' upon people in terms of consumerism and the british class system. These particular images taken on Brighton beach focus on the working class. However Parr was not intentionally wanting to expose these people in a negative light. He was rather just documenting this class as they were. Maybe he was drawn to the more shocking sights he saw and chose to document theses however his intentions were not to set out to document people negatively. 

Following this work, the next images in his exhibition were the documentation of middle class people. As explained in the information provided in the gallery next to the work, Parr documented the middle class as it seemed to be a class no one seemed to take a great interest in. Especially in terms of photography. During this time in Britain, a heavy emphasis in the media was already created over the working class as the country watched Thatcherism treat the working class so unfairly. 

I think Parr seems to be very good at documenting the ordinary and by doing so he manages to make it unordinary or extremely interesting. He photographed middle class people at 'Tory tea parties' and in the images we look upon what to me, look like typically british people, socialising, which to anyone on looking in that situation or if I were to see that kind of scene today, Id probably think nothing of it. British people having tea parities or just british people socialising is what we class as the 'norm'. However, the fact Parr thinks to stop and capture these moments as a still in his images, make them extremely interesting to look at as a photograph, as normally we would not look twice at these situations. 

Again this is something which I felt related to what I've been trying to portray in my own photography. I feel this concept is what I am also naturally drawn to. For instance, my Minor project images focused heavily and if not completely on the ordinary situations you'd expect to see at an event such as that. I focused my images on people socialising and drinking, as appose to the actual event.

This is also something I had in mind and wanted to focus upon when shooting the images for my major project. I focused a lot of my shots on the celebration and the way people socialise at this event, which to most is something they would not look twice at. 



The next lot of work presented by Parr I felt really changed my way of thinking or affected me was in two rooms, where Parr presented his most recent work where he had documented Wakefield's rhubarb farming and trade industry. Again, a heavy emphasis on colour is evident in Parr's work. Without the use of colour I do not feel the images would have the same impact. This has encouraged me to really think about my own work when it comes to the decision of whether to use black and white or coloured images. 

 This is therefore the reason Parr exhibited his work in the Hepworth at Wakefield. This work wasn't necessarily what was in the images which really got me thinking, it was in fact the way they had been presented in the exhibition. I took note of the layout and the way the exhibition had been curated throughout. Parr's earlier and more traditional style images shot on film were presented much larger than what I was expecting. The frames where white and for each section of the exhibition from his earlier work the images were matching in size and placed at eye height; the kind of level one would mostly expect to see in an exhibition of photography. 


In the next rooms however, where the images focus heavily on consumerism and are of much more recent times the images did not have frames, they were simply pinned to the walls. This really surprised me and the layout surprised me even more so, the images were of various sizes and dotted in random places upon the walls. Some really up a height. I thought this layout so interesting and different. It wasn't what I was expecting at all but I felt it worked so well.

Another wall in one of the rooms had small images all exactly the same size, packed tightly together like a collage filling a vast amount of the wall. The images were all in the same style of close ups of materialistic and almost grotesque objects. Again, a project which was very consumer based and not just a project simply documenting something but trying to say more about people and the society we live in. The images are extremely bright and saturated, yet another project which almost completely relies on the emphasis and use of colour. This particular project had a real impact when you walked into the room and saw the wall covered in these images.

I really like how Parr had catered the layout of his images to what the projects or photographs were about or trying to say. Until visiting this exhibition I had never thought of any inventive ways to present my work. So this exhibition really left me with something to think about.