Parrworld

Had the chance to go and see Martin Parr's Parrworld exhibition over at the Baltic.

First off, what a fantastic gallery - great location, facilites and incredibly helpful staff who want to chat about the stuff on show instead of just casting a nonchalant bead across any visitors.

As a curator, Martin Parr's selections of others' photographs are without question - considering these are his personal prints I am green with envy: Friedlander, Eggleston, Chris Kilip, Graham Smith and plenty of his Magnum colleagues. The photobooks as well are superbly picked and laid out giving the desired response of wanting to flick through and covet. The collected artifacts of miners strikes, Obama ephemera and US/Iraq/Afghanistan material are all interesting to look at but what exactly am I looking at here.....
I know as Parrworld we are invited to see the person (the genes of a chronic collector) but perhaps after seeing Damien Hirst's Pharmacy which is also showing here I wanted something with more substance then a Saddam wristwatch as nice as that may be.

I didn't think the images shown within the new Luxury theme Martin Parr has been working on were the strongest I had seen - plenty of the images are typical Parr: juxtapositions of class against class or in this case class against class aspiration and most show the signature effect of artificial light/ringflash (you can also spot it in sunglasses reflections so it can all be ticked off as suitable Parr-isms). My problem is that the selection shhown here feel almost Parr-lite.
If one of the highlights is that Newcastle glamour girls drink cans of Fosters instead of champagne at the races then ok, but I think we could have all taken a punt on that. Maybe its that we see it all now and that perhaps human nature in this sense is stagnating under X Factor and the likes of Heat magazine but I came away impressed the least from this new selection of photographs.

I must conclude though, that regardless of the quality of these new photographs - and any Parr is good Parr for most, myself included - and in a setting like the Baltic, t'was a most enjoyable day out by far.
Shame as I walked in to Newcastle to visit Side Gallery it was closed, but that's my excuse to go back....