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Chris Boot
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Martin Parr has becomewell known for his collections of photography books and postcards,but he is also a jackdawcollector of photographic and other themed objects.Some collections have already achieved notoriety â for instance his collection of Saddam Husseinwatches (wrist watches featuring photographs of Saddam Hussein, highly popular in Iraq prior to his downfall), and his collection of photographic trays, both exhibited at the 2004 Rencontres dâArles festival in southern France â but until nowthey have not been published in book form.This comprehensive account of eccentric objects collected by Parr over 25 years includes his memorabilia of political leaders and movements (Lenin, Margaret Thatcher and the Minerâs strike, for example), othermythologized characters (Osama bin Laden and the Spice Girls), his collections of photographic trays and kitschwallpaper, objects commemorating the M1 motorway, 9/11, and the Sputnik mission. Ranging between the banal and poignant, they are always hilarious. |
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At the halfway point along South Africa's great highway-the N1, running from Cape Town to Johannesburg-lies the small town of Beaufort West. With a prison in the middle of town on an island in the highway, it's a surreal road stop that offers everything a traveler might want: food, gas, a place to stay, an hour of sex. Its vivid characters and poignant social landscapes are the subject of Mikhael Subotzky's first photobook. Exquisitely designed and produced on a large portfolio scale, Beaufort West features thirty-six plates and an introduction by leading South African writer Jonny Steinberg. The book is both an important social document and the visual manifesto of the best of the new wave of South African art photographers. Beaufort West will be exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, opening on September 10, 2008. It is Mikhael Subotzky's first US solo exhibition. Mikhael Subotzky, born in Cape Town in 1981, began photographing the South African prison system while he was a student at the University of Cape Town. In his short career since then, he has come to be regarded as the most exciting photographer to emerge from South Africa and has won several of the world's major photography awards, including an ICP Infinity Award for Young Photographer of the Year in 2008. His photographs are collected by New York's Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery of South Africa, and, at just twenty-five, he is the youngest member of the Magnum Photos cooperative. |
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This book is the comprehensive account of Martin Parrs unique postcard collection. Featuring 650 cards, selected by Parr from his collection of over 20,000 cards built over 30 years, its contents are presented in the manner of a postcard album. A highly entertaining journey into the themes of Parrworld, it is also a serious study of postcard history through the 20th century. Presented in 20 chronologically sequenced chapters, this book opens with British postcards from the beginning of the century, made to mark notable local news events such as car crashes, murders, lightning strikes and acts of suffragette vandalism.It continues through the elaborate story-telling postcards of W Gothard, whose Barnsley studio commemorated mining and shipping disasters; a collection on incidents of World War I, from scenes of bombing to celebrations of war heroes; novelty portrait postcards from the 1920's and 1930's; bizarre hand-coloured cards from the 1930's; and, the holiday postcards of John Hinde that so influenced Parrs own photographic style. This book ends in Boring Postcards territory with a selection of late 20th century postcards promoting new motorways, airports and shops. |
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