Carry on for our New Color journey! Martin Parr!

Martin Parr


I am a B&W photo guy, but both Martin Parr and William Eggleston are my favourite photographer for all time! Why? because I love their subject matter(and of course William's old US color.). I love the way they captured our everyday's life, and we can always found some stories behind them, the little detail that we always forgot.

As I have already talked about William Eggleston so I will carry on about what happened after his "New Colour Movement". And Martin Parr is our main character for today! Like many of the photographers(especially for documentary photographers) back in the day, Martin Parr started his photography in black and white, but since this new colour movement began, Martin Parr started to ask himself a question "why not in colour?". So he started to use colour for his photography and became the Martin Parr that people well known for today, the crazy documentary photographer who loves to use crazy bright colour and loves on captures peoples ordinary life.

Please don't get me wrong, I am not saying that using the crazy colour and shooting for the ordinary subjects are wrong, but just because they are so Martin Parr and this is only one Martin Parr in our world so I will suggest leave this stuffs for him and don't follow his footstep, because it is not a easy way at all!

If we look through the surface from his colourful and funny scene, we can always found there are so many stories behind these "scene". Then we can found most of time Martin Parr are actually mocking or laughing these kind of things rather than anything. Of course, he loves to do this by his classic British humour way(nothing offensive at all.).

Every time when I read his pictures, I always think "god, those people are so stupid.", it is true that we all will think these people are so stupid but don't forget most of us had did the same things before, and we never realized. Am I right or wrong?

As a Magnum Documentary photographer, Martin Parr had successfully break Magnum's traditional rule for "what documentary photography" should be. May be the true documentary photography should be on war zone? may be more for the decisive moment? or may be "can you just care more about the people Mr. Parr?". Of course by the starting point from Magnum "Caring People" Martin Parr's pictures may not be really that "Caring" but more like "Mocking People", but it is also true that Martin Parr had brings our social problems and shows them from pictures, may be not all of us can understand but if you do you may found that people sometimes are really pathetic. What a sad truth.