The Irony of Photography

New Brighton, Merseyside, from "The Last Resort". Martin Parr

Marin Parr is as a social photojournalism, become famous for exposing the lifestyle of ordinary British people, reflecting the social decline and distress of the working class.  The innovative imagery presented from Parr is always satiric and ironic, for those reason his been criticized but in the end recognised as a brilliant photographer putting is name on the Magnum agencies.  The unusual photographs are showing to the viewer the comic aspect of a human being in every day life. Parr’s photos are often reporting the English life style, mostly in their holidays. The captured “surreal” moment on the sea side, where a woman is sunbathing with her daughter playing next to the digger. She decided to stop on the beach but at only few meters from the road, perhaps, to not move far from the road, expressing her laziness. For Parr the moral atrophy and preposterousness of our daily lives means, we can only find salvation through adopting a certain sense of humour. Parr started as B&W photographer, but one day he woke up deciding to explore and immortalized his shoot in colour. This decision can have many reasons for a photographer, one of them could be the clinical opportunity that only colour can achieve, describing any object token on a frame in is on singularity established from his on colour and therefore the light reaction.

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The Last Resort: Photographs of New Brighton. Dewi Lewis, 1986.