The acclaimed British photographer Martin Parr died on the 6th December at his Bristol home. He moved to Bristol in 1987 and opened the Martin Parr Foundation in 2015. His achievements within photography are extraordinary. Please see his website for more information.
www.martinparr.com
I visited the Martin Parr Foundation on 20th January at the opening of his posthumous exhibition A Last Resort, a collection of images first shown in 1986. This was the first ‘new’ exhibition following his death. A guided tour of the Foundation and talks including one given by photographer Anna Fox illuminated his life and achievements.
Below is a memorial image from that day of Martin Parr outside the Foundation
Following my visiting the exhibition, I decided to walk across St Phillips Causeway to Lawrence Hill Roundabout, documenting the journey across the long bridge. Again I was photographing the ‘semiotics’ of an urban environment, looking for micro-landscapes which may reflect the wider landscape but equally may not. I was led by a ‘sensation’ inside me.
Falmouth University had been providing students with lectures and research regarding Conceptual Documentary Photography, a relatively new form of photography which focusses on the banal and is mostly presented in the form of beautifully constructed photo-books.
Photographers such as Martin Parr himself and Steven Gill work in this way.
Here is a link to Stephen Gill’s Hackney Wick photobook. He documented a market in Hackney from 2002 for 2 years, making photographs on a plastic camera he purchased for 50p.
Continuing in a similar style to my images of Lawrence Hill Roundabout, and maybe content to also photograph the ‘banal’ rather than the magnificent, these are the images taken on my walk from the Martin Parr Foundation to Lawrence Hill Roundabout. Looking for meaning in the every day seems important to me.
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