Martin Parr: Life's a Beach @Aperture

JTF (just the facts): A total of 53 large scale color photographs, unframed and pinned directly to the wall, and hung against white walls in the entry area and the large single room gallery space. All of the works are pigment prints, made from negatives taken between 1985 and 2012. The prints are shown in two sizes: a smaller size (either 20x24 or 20x30 or reverse, in editions of 10) and a larger size (40x50 or 40x60 or reverse, in editions of 5). A monograph of this body was recently published by Aperture (here and here) and is available in the bookshop for $25/$300. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: While there might be an expanse of sand, a clump of palm trees, or some lapping waves in a Martin Parr beach photograph, the beach itself isn't really the subject. For Parr, the beach isn't inherently interesting for its natural beauty or its majestic grandeur; on the contrary, it's a nearly universal setting for studying human behavior. From his native Britain to far flung locales all over the globe, he has quietly documented what people do at the beach: how we dress ourselves, how families and lovers interact, what we read and eat, and how we relax. With his sharp eye for subtle absurdity, his pictures capture a broad spectrum of diverse cultures and quirky activities, all laid bare to catch the warmth of the sun.

Many of Parr's beach pictures get right up close and blast your senses with eye popping color, turning a striped beach hat, a pink bathing suit, or a sandy foot into a striking, off-kilter still life. In these images, the color takes over, exaggerating the visual volume of blue eye protectors and a matching blue towel or a bold American flag bathing suit. Parr's framing forces us look closely, often pointing out the brightly ridiculous.

These one liners are balanced by more complex compositions that use multiple planes of distance (front/back or front/middle/back) to create unlikely beach crowd juxtapositions. A couple in Goa is joined by a sacred white cow, while the paper trunks of fake palm trees at an indoor beach in Japan frame a father and child. Patterns knit stories together, from clashing floral beach umbrellas that surround a woman in a purple bathing suit to striped folding chairs that provide a jumbled set of angles and lines for a sleeping family. Whether it's eating crab legs and lounging in rubber tire tubes in China, headscarved picture taking in Thailand, musclebound posing in Rio, or tabloid reading in the UK, Parr tracks down geographical peculiarities and builds them into larger scenes using nearby props and contrasts. A flimsy blue plastic raincoat, an oversized ice cream cone, a perfect book title ("Summer Surrender"), a dolphin boogie board, a muddy backhoe, the head of a white swan, a yellow and black soccer ball, they all become focal points for overlooked regional oddity, collapsed into single frame stories.

This show is brimming with casual summer fun and Parr's discerning comic timing is in fine form. Every seemingly random snapshot reveals itself to be something more, a deceivingly complex compendium of bodies, cultures, and seaside pastimes.

Collector's POV: While prints on view at Aperture are not always overtly for sale, there was an actual price list for this show. The smaller prints range from $4500 to $6000, while the larger prints are $11000. Parr's prints are intermittently available in the secondary markets, with recent prices ranging between roughly $1000 and $12000.

 

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

 

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Magnum Photos page (here)
• Features/Reviews: Feature Shoot (here), GUP (here), Huffington Post (here)
• DLK COLLECTION review of Martin Parr: USA Color at Janet Borden (here)

Martin Parr: Life's a Beach
Through July 3rd

Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10001

Martin Parr: USA Color @Borden

JTF (just the facts): A total of 21 large scale color works, variously framed and matted, and hung against white walls in the divided main gallery space. The exhibit also includes a small hand held album of color prints, displayed in a glass case. The single images are either chromogenic prints or pigment prints, made between 1993 and 2012. Sizes range from 20x24 to 40x60, and the prints come in editions of 5, 10, or 25. The album consists of 100 4x6 chromogenic prints, the entire set originally available in an edition of 5. (Installation shots at right.)

 

Comments/Context: When you're as prolific a photographer as Martin Parr, at some point it becomes possible to put together a show or a book with nearly any theme - just pick a subject, drill a core sample through the archive, and out pop dozens of images that share a common connection. It's a testament to Parr's consistent originality across the decades that these subsets of work all bear his unmistakable blend of visual wit and saturated color. This particular show gathers together pictures made in America, but could easily have been called flags, food, and tourists given its clusters of imagery. It's a high voltage retrospective of American eccentricity, endearingly brash and conspicuously ridiculous.

 

While it's always easy to have a few laughs and smiles at a Martin Parr show, I think that his snapshot humor has often led us to discount his compositional craft and his exceptional timing. Parr's split second juxtapositions are culled from the river of ordinariness flowing by, his eye able to pick out the inherent oddness of the everyday and get it framed just right to highlight that moment of unexpected vitality. The tourist shots in this show all turn on the relationship of clothing to the surrounding environment: a dime store feathered headdress on a Grand Canyon watcher, a cowboy hat flanked by the Las Vegas sphinx, a black and white $100 dollar patterned hat near the spots of a giraffe at the Atlanta zoo. His pictures capture the unintended irony of simple things: the gaudy flowered shirts worn by middle aged men to a colorful Hawaiian luau, the jungle florals on a pair of beach swimsuits, the complex angle of a girl in a James Dean jacket that somehow matches the replica Eiffel Tower in the distance. In Parr's world, cultural signifiers go awry left and right.

 

Parr's images of American food opt for the subtly outrageous. Meat on a stick is a common theme, from an oversized corndog slathered in mustard and ketchup to a manly hunk of grilled lamb still on the bone; an overstuffed Las Vegas breakfast plate and a rainbow colored layer cake tell us more about the extremes found in the American diet. Parr's flags are equally bold and puzzling, from a speedo style bathing suit and golf headcovers in the stars and stripes, to a small flag draped amid sausages for sale. His fabulous album of flags taken in New York just after 9/11 (when American flags flew nearly everywhere in abundant variety) deserves to be a book of its own - it's poignant, patriotic, and wonderfully over the top all at the same time.

 

Parr's maverick vision sets him apart from most of his contemporaries, and even at his most caustic, I find it hard not to revel in the joy in his photographs. Even as we drown in an endless sea of digital snapshots, a Martin Parr image is still immediately recognizable at twenty paces. His photographs embrace the quirks of humanity with warmth and affection, reliably jolting us with bright color and understated comedy.

 

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced as follows. The 20x24 and 20x30 prints are priced at $5000 or $6000 each. The larger 40x60 prints are $12000 each. The album is available for $5000. Parr's prints are intermittently available in the secondary markets, with recent prices ranging between $1000 and $12000.

 

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

 

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Magnum Photos page (here)
• Features/Reviews: New Yorker PhotoBooth (here)

Martin Parr: USA Color

Through June 28th

 

Janet Borden, Inc.

560 Broadway

New York, NY 10012

Daniele Tamagni & Africolor @Danziger

Yet another holdover review from the summer.

JTF (just the facts): A two part show, with color photographs by Daniele Tamagni in the main gallery space and a group show entitled Africolor in the back room. The Tamagni exhibit consists of 12 c-prints framed in white and matted, each 12x18, 20x28 or 28x39 or reverse, in editions of 10, from 2008. A monograph of this body of work, entitled Gentlemen of Bacongo, was published by Trolley Books in 2009 (here). The Africolor exhibit consists of 24 works from 7 different photographers, variously framed and matted or pinned directly to the wall. (Installation shots at right.)

The following photographers are included in the Africolor portion of the exhibit; the number of prints on view and their details are in parentheses:

• Samuel Fosso (2 digital c-prints from the series TATI, each roughly 59x63, in editions of 3+2AP, from 1997)
• Martin Parr (6 Lambda prints, either 24x20, 24x36, or 50x70, from 2001-2005)
• JR (1 pigment print, 26x40, from 2008)
• Malick Sidibe (8 gelatin silver prints with hand painted glass and cardboard frames, ranging from 4x3 to 16x12, from 1974 to 2003)
• Mickalene Thomas (2 c-prints, each 40x50, in editions of 5, from 2010)
• Ruud van Empel (2 cibachrome prints on dibond and Plexiglas, each 33x24, in editions of 13, from 2006 and 2008)
• Lolo Veleko (3 pigment prints, each 14x11, from 2002-2004)

Comments/Context: This smart combination of Italian photojournalist Daniele Tamagni’s images of dapper Congolese men and a supporting exhibit of color-driven African photography (loosely defined) gets my vote for the best summer group show of photography in New York this year. In contrast to the mind numbing boredom of the typical gathering of the gallery stable, this show introduces a memorable body of work and surrounds it with a relevant sampler of related pictures. It’s fresh, brash, and lively, with a snappy sense of style.
.

Tamagni’s photographs chronicle the dapper fashions of members of La SAPE (La Societe des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Elegantes). With a flair for extravagant, vibrant color (blazers in pink and lime green, pants in red and orange), their dashing suits and careful accessories provide a stark contrast to the poverty of their everyday lives. These gentlemen strut and swagger around town with elegant walking sticks and fedoras, creating an eye-catching mix of colonial and Congolese cultural remnants. The push and pull between the natty clothes and the realities of crumbling walls, wet laundry, and wandering children makes for visual contradictions that stand out.
.

The paired Africolor show bursts with a cacophony of styles, colors and patterns. I found Martin Parr’s images from Dakar to be especially striking, from the dueling stripes of a dress and handbag, to a rainbow of shoe straps and a head covered in sunglasses for sale. Lolo Veleko’s portraits capture youthful street styles, with funky, unexpected combinations of fashions. And Mickalene Thomas’ interior portraits collect a dizzying number of patterns (curtains, pillows, sofa, and dress) in layers that defy logic but somehow work in electric harmony. With Sidibe, van Empel, and Fosso added to the mix, the room vibrates with casual glamour and dynamic energy.
.

What I found most intriguing about this selection of photographs was the repeated sense of Western styles being appropriated and refashioned for local tastes, forging something entirely new and original out of the raw material of the familiar. All in, a positive pulse of life beats strongly throughout this entire exhibit, making it a welcome antidote to the sleepy status quo of the warm summer months.

Collector's POV: The prints by Daniele Tamagni are priced in ratcheting editions. The 12x18 works start at $3000 and rise to $5500 at the end of the edition, the 20x28 works start at $4000 and rise to $6500, and the 28x39 works start at $5000 and rise to $7500. Tamagni’s works have very little secondary market history, so gallery retail is likely the best option for interested collectors at this point.
.

The prints in the Africolor portion of the show are priced as follows:

• Samuel Fosso: $5500 each
• Martin Parr: $3400, $6000, or $12000, based on size
• JR: $1500
• Malick Sidibe: $3800 or $8500, based on size
• Mickalene Thomas: $9000 each
• Ruud van Empel: $34000 or $38000
• Lolo Veleko: $3000 or $5500

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)
.

Transit Hub:

• Tamagni artist site (here)
• Parr artist site (here)
• Thomas artist site (here)
• Review: Photo Booth (here)

Daniele Tamagni & Africolor

Through September 10th

Danziger Projects

527 West 23rd Street

New York, NY 10011

Martin Parr, Luxury @Borden

JTF (just the facts): A total of 18 color works, most framed in black and matted, and hung in the main gallery space. The inkjet prints come in three sizes (or reverse): 20x24, 20x30, or 40x60. 15 of the images on view are either 20x24 or 20x30, both in editions of 10. There are also 3 prints in the larger size, displayed without frames, in editions of 5. The images were taken between 1995 and 2008. A monograph of this body of work was published in 2009 by Chris Boot (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Given the punishing depths of the economic crisis, it's hardly a surprise that our contemporary artists and photojournalists have recently pointed their cameras at a variety of depressing subjects: foreclosed homes, empty shopping malls, melting icebergs, ruined cities, and people on the brink of emotional breakdown. These pictures attempt to tell the story of real world failures, of the downstream consequences for actions that may have seemed perfectly rational at the time, but turned out to be woefully misguided.
.

Martin Parr's Luxury series takes us back to the point just before the bubble burst, when conspicuous consumption was at its height. His images of art fairs, horse races, fashion shows and lavish VIP parties chronicle the outrageous behaviors of the international rich and famous with an anthropological eye for detail. Excess is everywhere: too much lipstick, too many furs, over-the-top fashions, overgroomed toy animals, tricked out baby strollers, and too many cherries in a single drink - the consistent "too-muchness" making the glamour seem ridiculous. There is a black comedy to all these rituals, people trying too hard to belong to the super elite, going through the motions of someone else's definition of what wealthy people are supposed to be doing. Taken together, they are a clear sign that we had lost our way.

.

What I like best about these pictures is that each one is slightly off, the facade of perfection being pulled back just slightly. I particularly enjoyed the images of art patrons wearing clothes that echo the artworks they are viewing - they are visually witty, with a deeper current of commentary about how we create our own identities. Everyone in these pictures is putting on a show, acting out a pantomime, and Parr has captured small moments where what seems altogether normal to the participants is exposed as anything but. The satire is pitch perfect because the subjects are entirely serious, even if a cat is perched on a shoulder or a smile is overbright.

.

While many photojournalists were focused on soldiers, politicians, bankers, and the impoverished, Parr went in exactly the opposite direction, and nonetheless found many of the same symptoms of an unsustainable situation. Don't let the saturated colors and the snapshot aesthetic fool you. These images tell the sordid tale of the boom and bust just as well as a foreclosure sign.
.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced as follows. The 20x24 and 20x30 prints are priced at $6000 each, regardless of size. The larger 40x60 prints are $11000 each. Parr's work has started to become more available in the secondary markets in recent years; prints have ranged in price between $1000 and $10000.

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Feature: Times Online (here)
• Interview: lens culture (here)

Martin Parr, Luxury

Through April 24th

Janet Borden, Inc.

560 Broadway

New York, NY 10012

Martin Parr, Parr-O-Rama @Borden

JTF (just the facts): A total of 36 images (3 black and white and 33 chromogenic color prints), in various sizes, ranging from 7x10 to 50x60. In editions of 10, 25, 33, or open, depending on the specific image. The show contains a mix of vintage and later prints, with work from the early 1970s to the present, displayed in the main gallery. (Installation shot at right.)

Comments/Context: The photographs of Martin Parr take some getting used to. Many of the images seem indistinguishable from snapshots, the colors are often blindingly vibrant and flashy, and the point of view lives somewhere between sarcasm, mockery, and wry wit. At first glance, they're a lot to take in, but given some patience, most reveal additional layers of thought-provoking ideas about our societies and cultures, consumerism, and modern existence.

.

The mini retrospective on view at Janet Borden spans nearly all of Parr's career, including at least one work from a significant number of his picture projects (Think of England, The Last Resort, Common Sense, Small World, Luxury, Bad Weather, Signs of the Times, The Cost of Living, Food, Dubai, and Japanese Commuters Asleep are all represented). Seeing all of the images together, Parr's consistent "eye" becomes more visible: close-ups of objects not usually paid much attention to, but which become striking when enlarged, and careful juxtapositions (accomplished with vantage point and framing) that highlight the ironic and ridiculous in the everyday that surrounds us and often passes unnoticed.

.

Not many photographers have tackled humor with as much success as Martin Parr. For the most part, his work has accomplished the tricky task of intelligently highlighting the subtle comedy of life's situations, without falling into the trap of the jester or the jackass. His pictures aren't necessarily guffaw-inducing, but more the type that cause you to smile with the knowledge that he has observed something quite surprising that you likely missed.

.

This show isn't exactly a "greatest hits" exhibit, although some of his best images from Think of England are indeed included. It is more of a sampler, showing off a variety of approaches, although not always with the most striking of the images from any given series. As such, it has a bit of a "hit or miss" quality to it. Overall, however, it is a strong reminder of Parr's place as an important chronicler of our modern existence.

.

The artist's personal website can be found here. His page at Magnum Photos is here.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show range from $1500 to $15000, based both on size and popularity. Given the fairly strict boundaries of our particular collection, we will need to do some more homework exploring all of his various projects to find one image that would fit just right (perhaps one from his Flowers book).

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

Martin Parr, Parr-O-Rama

Through January 31st

Janet Borden, Inc.

560 Broadway
New York, NY 10012