Martin Parr, one of Britain's best-known contemporary photographers, and President of Magnum, the world-famous photographic agency has undertaken a photo-documentary book project. Oxford is a collection of around 100 photographs documenting an academic year in the life of the university. They capture the day-to-day life of the colleges and University at work and play, and the colourful and arcane rituals that make it so distinctive. His photographs are accompanied by an extended essay that draws on, and enriches, the photographic material and penned by Simon Winchester, OBE, the British writer, journalist and broadcaster. The very first photo-documentary of Oxford was created by William Henry Fox Talbot. A century and a half later, Martin Parr's new project pays tribute to the great the pioneer of photography, and coincides with the Bodleian Library's bid to secure his personal archive.

Oxford

Arts & Photography

Parr, Martin

Winchester OBE, Simon

Photography & Video

Oxford University Press

Home and Abroad

pp. 80. small tears to the covers, "This photographic study provides a social observation of our time, bringing together all of Parr's colour projects. It looks at theme park culture, seaside resorts, the middle classes at home and out shopping, the Pyramids, and a Moscow McDonalds."

JONATHAN CAPE.

A hilarious social observation of our time, this book links all Martin Parr's various colour projects. It starts in the English home, then radiates out to the world. He passes through theme park culture and seaside resorts, and photographs the middle classes at home and out shopping. He encounters a ubiquitous consumer-culture stretching out of Britain and reaching the foot of the pyramids, the Eiffel tower - and a Moscow McDonalds.

As the title of this little book suggests, each of the postcards that fill its pages is, in a sense, quite boring. Stale, often dully composed images of corporate headquarters, roadways, bus-station parking lots, convalescent-home dayrooms, hospital cafeterias, and undistinguished motels. But look carefully, and the cards--culled from the collection of artist Martin Parr--are filled with fascinating little details. As a group, they offer readers the interesting opportunity to puzzle over the collective psyche of the people of the 1950s and '60s (the approximate vintage of the images) who were inclined to create, buy, and send these cards. What, one can't help but wonder, could be so scintillating about a room at the Fortes Excelsior Motor Lodge near Pontefract, Yorkshire? The singular force of the orange bedspreads, carpet, drapes, and walls punctuated by the inexplicably white leather upholstered panel attached to the wall unit behind each of the room's beds. The exterior of the Mirfield Modern School, shot at a distance and unimaginatively placed dead in the center of the gray sky and green playing field? The building's Bauhaus-like lines. The tarmac of Luton Airport in London? The pink jumbo jet being towed into the frame from the left. The uniformly shaped trailers parked at the Freshwater Caravan Camp? The handwritten X that presumably marks the sender's location. The Chalets at Llandanwg? Arguably, not much. The few hundred images here, unfettered by any explanatory text, offer a far from dull diversion for any readers interested in mid-century design or the mundane details of daily life. --Jordana Moskowitz

Boring Postcards

Phaidon Press

You know those old postcards that show the local meatpacking factory in all its cinder-block glory or the sickening color scheme of a cheap '70s motel room? Well, here they are. Beginning with panoramas of highways in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and other U.S. states, Boring Postcards segues to truck stops, restaurants, motor inns, malls, airports, military bases, factories, tools, and automobiles. Every image is certifiably boring, whether by dint of a photographer's ineptitude (dead-on views taken from too far away) or the sorry state of corporate architecture and interior design. And yet, as earnest advertisements for the American Way of Life, they all radiate a sunny faith in the uniqueness and desirability of whatever they portray.There's not a word of commentary in this book, but that part is up to you. Certain things begin to stand out as you flip through the pages. Like the always blue skies. (Positive thinking!) Or the potentially interesting details that are uniformly obliterated, thanks to those polite middle-distance views and the muddy qualities of cheap lithography. There's a weird tension between the blandly generic ("Fine Food" reads the only visible sign atop a low-slung white building) and the proudly local (according to the postcard caption, this is "The famous Blue Grill on U.S. 40, St. Elmo, Ill."). In its silently subversive way, Boring Postcards proposes that we look more closely at this hallowed form of marketing to see what it tells us about the values and standards of mainstream American culture. --Cathy Curtis

Boring Postcards USA

Magnum photographer Martin Parr is a key figure in the worlds of photography and contemporary art. He has been an avid postcard collector for twenty years and in Langweilige Postkarten he presents the pride of his 'boring' collection: 160 postcards from Germany that take you on a daringly dull tour of its autobahns, airports, hotels, factories, shops, border posts, tower blocks and new towns.Presented without commentary or introduction of any kind, and with the original captions, the postcards are allowed to speak for themselves. They were all made before German reunification and provide fascinating and hilarious insights into German social and architectural values between the 1950s and 1980s. The two nations' special relationship with concrete and the functional modernist block is nostalgically and repetitiously celebrated in postcard after postcard, and the volume provides a revealing context for consideration of the work of contemporary German art and landscape photographers.

Langweilige Postkarten

"Photographers have been making photobooks--bound collections of their works--ever since the birth of photography in the early nineteenth century ... This publication tells the story of photography via the history of the photobook, revealing the ways in which photographers have influenced each other's work through their books, and consequently how their use of photography has developed over time ... The first of two extensive volumes, this publication explores more than 200 photobooks through 750 colour illustations, detailed captions, and an illuminating text written by the photographer"--Dustjacket.

The Photobook: A History, Vol. 1

Badger, Gerry

160 boring postcards of the British Isles, reproduced as they have been found, actual size, from the collection of the iconoclast of British photograhy, Martin Parr. This is a serious art book, a depiction of a tragic Britain with tragic taste, and a photographic entertainment which a large audience will enjoy.

Individual Artists

The author has now turned his attention to the USA with 160 of the dullest postcards from the land of opportunity. The book provides not only amusement, but a commentary on how America has changed, and a celebration of those places that have been forgotten by conventional history.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Parr, Martin. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Parr, Martin

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Parr, Martin. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Oxford

Home and Abroad

Home and Abroad

Boring Postcards

Boring Postcards USA

Langweilige Postkarten

The Photobook: A History, Vol. 1

Boring Postcards

Boring Postcards USA

The Photobook: A History, Vol. 1