Martin Parr: Beach Therapy

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During his long career as a photographer, Martin Parr has always photographed on beaches, particularly in the UK. He has often used the beach as a laboratory to experiment with new cameras and techniques. So far example, when he changed from black and white to medium format colour in the early 80s his first major project was about New Brighton, a run down seaside resort near Liverpool. In recent months he has started exploring the beach with the aid of a telephoto lens. This lens is rarely used in the world of art and documentary photography so it is a challenge to find new ways of using it. Often this involves incorporating the vegetation on the perimeter with the beach as a backdrop, both in and out of focus. So over his long career he has tried everything from a close up macro lens, a medium format wide angled camera and finally this latest offering with the telephoto.

Reviews

No one captures the colorful, blissful chaos of the beach like the British photographer Martin Parr. Some of his seaside shots swim with the verve of a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Others are spare, dotted with tiny figures who are nearly swallowed up in the sprawl of the dunes.-- "Paris Review"

Author Bio

Martin Parr is one of the best-known documentary photographers of his generation. The author of more than 90 books and the editor of 30 others, he has firmly established his photographic legacy. He has also curated two photography festivals: Arles in 2004 and the Brighton Biennial in 2010. More recently he curated the Barbican exhibition, Strange and Familiar . He has been a member of the Magnum agency since 1994 and is currently its President. In 2013 he was appointed visiting professor of photography at the University of Ulster. Parr's work has been collected by many of the major museums, including the Tate, the Pompidou, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.