Odyssey
A reading room by the JOJO Library
for Indian Photo Festival 2020
We invite you to put on your headphones, adjust your volume and immerse yourself in reading with this soundscape.
Martin Parr / Life's a Beach
In the United Kingdom, one is never more than seventy-five miles away from the coast. With this much shoreline, it’s not surprising that there is a strong British tradition of photography by the seaside. American photographers may have given birth to street photography, but according to photographer Martin Parr, “in the UK, we have the beach!” Here, he asserts, people can relax, be themselves, and show off all those traces of mildly eccentric British behavior.
Parr has been photographing this subject for many decades, documenting all aspects of the tradition. His international career, in fact, could well be traced to the launch of The Last Resort, a 1986 book depicting the seaside resort of New Brighton, near Liverpool. What may be less known is that this obsession has led Parr to photograph beaches across the world. This compilation, his first on the topic, presents photos of beachgoers on far-flung shores, including Argentina, Brazil, China, Spain, Italy, Latvia, Japan, the United States, Mexico, Thailand, and of course, the UK, among others. This book shows Parr at his best, startling us with the moments of captured absurdity and immersing us in the rituals and traditions associated with beach life the world over.
Source: Aperture.org
About the Author
Martin Parr is one of the best-known documentary photographers of his generation. With over 100 books of his own published, and another 30 edited by Parr, his photographic legacy is already established.
Parr also acts as a curator and editor. He has curated two photography festivals, Arles in 2004 and Brighton Biennial in 2010. More recently Parr curated the Barbican exhibition, Strange and Familiar.
Parr has been a member of the Magnum agency since 1994 and was President from 2013 - 2017. In 2013 Parr was appointed the visiting professor of photography at the University of Ulster.
Parr’s work has been collected by many of the major museums, from the Tate, the Pompidou and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Martin Parr established the Martin Parr Foundation in 2017.
About the Publisher
Aperture, a not-for-profit foundation, connects the photo community and its audiences with the most inspiring work, the sharpest ideas, and with each other—in print, in person, and online. Created in 1952 by photographers and writers as “common ground for the advancement of photography,” Aperture today is a multiplatform publisher and community, engaged with photography as a language of ideas and committed to the medium’s contributions to the urgent issues in society and contemporary culture.
For more information and to purchase the book online, please visit https://aperture.org
Book video produced by JOJO Library
Post Production by Aditya Tawate
All reproductions are used with the permissions of the author and/or publisher.