FINE ART PRINTMAKING
Martin Parr
Martin Parr, The Cost of Living, 1986-1988
Martin Parr, The Cost of Living, 1986-1988
Martin Parr's work "cost of living" captures the life after he and his wife moved to Bristol. He uses his camera to sensitively capture and record the social activities of the middle class, such as shopping, parties and entertainment. Through his camera, he reveals the hidden contradictions in the life of the middle class in a society where the gap between the rich and the poor is gradually widening.
The Last Resort 25 1983–6, printed 2018, © Martin Parr / Magnum
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Another of his works, "the last resort", in which he abandoned the traditional black-and-white documentary magnification and began to use color photos. All the scenes in the photo are taken from a beach resort near Liverpool called new Brighton. In the photo, people enjoy basking in the sun on the beach while rubbish is all around them. He observes people's life from a unique perspective. He collects all kinds of prejudices in society and makes them intersect. With bright colors and unique lens language, a seemingly absurd but powerful photo attracts people to watch and think.
In his common sense (1999), he records some fragments of life by forensic methods.
From the beginning of food, we can see a kind of morbid fascination. In this set of works, he uses some disgusting close-up shots, such as a cup of tea, cakes sprinkled with icing sugar, flies flying on jelly, and so on. When these details of life are zoomed in, they look so disgusting. Anything that looks ordinary in daily life seems unattractive in this way of recording.
In pal's works, I can feel that he is observing the world like a forensic doctor. He uses a medical photography method to magnify the things in life, and this kind of photography method will make the audience feel disgusted or even repelled. This is also the shooting technique I want to learn. He expressed his question about the rotten life through the debris in his life. This is one of the reasons why I like his works best. Through his works, he combines the charm and aversion of things and reveals the differences between personal consumerism and corporate consumerism. The highlight of his work is that whether you know the place he shot or not, you can find resonance in one of his works. How to present the relationship between people and consumer society with a unique perspective and how to arouse the audience's resonance with a unique visual language. His works make me feel very cordial, but my works lack this kind of characteristic that can arouse people's resonance, so this is the next question I need to think about, what angle to express my works can arouse the audience's resonance.