gp-ak
Member
I was at a bookstore the other day browsing through photo books, two that particularly interest me were No Small Journeys by Robert Adams, photographs of people in parking lots, and Martin Parr's Mexico.
After looking at Adam's work I was struck at how much humanity and tenderness he was able to draw out of ordinary people in a boring, flat place. It made Parr look flat and grouchy, rendering the very real human drama in Mexico just a boring as the plastic placemats he took pictures of. I ended it up putting the book back disgusted. Parr, a man of a well off nation traveled to a struggling and exploited nation specifcally to make everyone look ugly, and profit from it, it struck me. Surely the commercialism that he photographs is an ill, but taking lumpy portraits of Mexicans in harsh flash lighting with a macro lens to make them look even uglier seems exploitative. Leering can only take you so far, and Martin Parr seems unwilling to try anything else.
I'll end with the opening quotation of No Small Journeys
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"If we come upon innocence, beauty, caring, joy, or courage, even in lost places, are we not obliged to acknowledge them in defiance of ironists?"[/FONT]
After looking at Adam's work I was struck at how much humanity and tenderness he was able to draw out of ordinary people in a boring, flat place. It made Parr look flat and grouchy, rendering the very real human drama in Mexico just a boring as the plastic placemats he took pictures of. I ended it up putting the book back disgusted. Parr, a man of a well off nation traveled to a struggling and exploited nation specifcally to make everyone look ugly, and profit from it, it struck me. Surely the commercialism that he photographs is an ill, but taking lumpy portraits of Mexicans in harsh flash lighting with a macro lens to make them look even uglier seems exploitative. Leering can only take you so far, and Martin Parr seems unwilling to try anything else.
I'll end with the opening quotation of No Small Journeys
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"If we come upon innocence, beauty, caring, joy, or courage, even in lost places, are we not obliged to acknowledge them in defiance of ironists?"[/FONT]