The exhibition includes works from three of Martin Parr’s collections: “Albania 1990” showing images from his visit to Albania in that year; “Common Sense”, showing western consumerism and “Small World” showing famous tourist destinations that have become victims of their own success.
TIRANA, June 15 – The National Gallery of Arts is hosting in its temporary exhibitions wing, , a photo exhibition of the well-known British photographer Martin Parr from the 15th of June to 7th of August 2011. This is the first personal exhibition of Parr in Albania. It is also the first time that images from the series Albania 1990 show to the general public.
The exhibition includes works from three of Martin Parr’s collections: “Albania 1990” showing images from his visit to Albania in that year; “Common Sense”, showing western consumerism and “Small World” showing famous tourist destinations that have become victims of their own success. The photo-installation, Common Sense, is one of the largest Parr has ever completed in Europe, using 270–slightly larger than A3 size– images.
Albania 1990
In 1990 Martin Parr travelled to Albania on the first tourist trip into the country after the fall of the Berlin wall. He says that: “this was an architectural tour and out of the 14 participants, 12 turned out to be journalists.” He was able to roam freely early in the morning or when there was limited amount of time off. Although still quite recent, these images depict a different world from the Albania we know now.
Common Sense 1995/1998
In 1999 Parr produced this grid of bright-colored close up images that depict the details of the modern western world that has become so familiar. From close ups of fast food to woman’s jewelry, it is an index of the flotsam and jetsam of the contemporary world.
Small World 1989/2007
With his ongoing study of global tourism Martin Parr shows how the image of a famous resort is often a contradiction of the reality. With tourism as the biggest industry in the world, Parr shows us what a surreal world it has become, often drowning in people as sites become victims of their own success.
British Ambassador
Hosting a reception in honor of the 85th birthday of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, British ambassador to Albania, Fiona McIlwham said that she “couldn’t think of a more fitting way to celebrate our Queen’s Birthday in Albania. Martin Parr’s images of Albania in 1990 present a stark reminder of the dramatic transformation this country has undergone.” Parr’s more recent works, also on display at the National Gallery, expose the dangers of disposable culture and consumerism and the challenge of embracing progress, while preserving and understanding our experience, history and identity.
The Ambassador added that the event is “a reminder of the depth and breadth of UK-Albania relations. Today is a chance to celebrate those relations, to celebrate Albania’s journey, to remember shared history and values, and to celebrate our friendship and future.”
The exhibition is supported by the British Council and hosted by the National Gallery of Arts with the support of the Director, Rubens Shima.
Critics on Parr’s photography
As the art critic Gerry Badger has written “Martin Parr is an exemplary photographic figure at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Not quite an out-and-out modernist, not quite a postmodernist, he is a leading light, indeed a founder, of the New European Color Photography School, yet is also a member of Magnum, photojournalism’s premier agency.” This, according to Badger, makes Parr “familiar with the contemporary treadmill of the successful photojournalist, but at the same does not prohibit him from working in a conceptual way, showing in art galleries as well as purely photographic galleries.”
Parr is a photographer of great learning, “a genuinely versatile photographer, one who lives, sleeps, and breathes photography in all its manifestations, from base function to lofty art. Martin’s whole modus operandi… depends upon slipping deftly between photographic worlds, thereby instinctively addressing such issues as the role of the photographer, the status of the photographic image in our culture, and indeed the very nature of contemporary culture itself. Parr’s whole career, and more pertinently his imagery, asks questions about high and low culture, art and commercialism, the duplicity of the photographic image, and about the lives we live today.”
