Martin Parr: Mexico - Hardcover

4.19

26 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1597110310 ISBN 13: 9781597110310

Publisher: Aperture, 2006

For much of his career, Martin Parr has specialized in skewering the eccentricities and peculiarities of his native Great Britain--in particular those having to do with food, tourism, bad fashion choices and� more food. Mexico is Parr's first new thematic series to be published in book form since 2002, a distinct geographical departure, and in part a greater departure as well. Parr is struck not only by Mexican culture, but also by the clear impact of America's pop culture and economy on Mexican life--the juxtaposition of Mickey Mouse with brightly colored saints, Nike logos with Day of the Dead skulls and Coca Cola with cacti. Here viewers are in recognizable territory with Parr's colorful close-ups of food, hats, signs and souvenirs, garishly shot with medical efficiency--but Mexico also includes some straight records of human faces, images that capture photographer and subject in the act of mutual contemplation. These moments of mercy are one with the underlying theme of Parr's more ironic work, calling up equally the corruption of authentic cultural forms by global consumer culture, which he both critiques and celebrates. As Parr puts it, "What I am saying is that it's a good and a bad thing. I'm constantly trying to express ambiguity. And that's what photography does very well."

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Review:

"As usual, his focus is on consumerism and taste of a most questionable sort. He swoops low over enormous pink sugar doughnuts, wristwatches features Jesus and the Virgin of Guadalupe, garishly decorated pastries, and Day of the Dead sugar skulls visited by bees but steps back for views of camera-toting tourists and a barrier of tires painted red, white, and aqua. Tweaking cultural imperialism, reveling in vernacular clich�, Parr may not be subtle but he's always sharp." --The New Yorker

"In his signature style -- observations of the symbols and rituals of everyday life tightly framed and saturated with color -- Parr explores the often oil-and-water mix of American and Mexican imagery: Men wearing caps touting U.S. sports logos; T-shirts emblazoned with SpongeBob, Mickey Mouse and the Simpsons; Halloween competing with the traditions of the Day of the Dead; Jesus and Spider-Man trinkets; a rusty Coca-Cola sign mounted on a cactus, pictures of tourists taking pictures." -- Lynne Heffley --The Los Angeles Times

"Hidden in plain sight, the paradoxes of modern life often slip by unseen, until documentary photographer Martin Parr trains his lens on them." -- David O'Grady --Nylon Magazine

"From the moment you take this book into your hands, you know the intent is to stimulate. The silver pinwheel cover, novel in its unfinished quality and radiating with kitschy abandon, announces that we've already arrived at the carnival. You know before seeing a single photograph that this will not be a nuanced approach to a complex culture: Mexico has no explanatory subtitle and is printed in a font reminiscent of a f�tbol jersey or a mechanic's roadside sign. These are snapshots taken through the selective lens of Martin Parr." -- Neil Farrell --Photo-Eye: The International Magazine of Photography Books

"Martin Parr's Mexico, a narrow tome with a splendidly gaudy holographic cover, is a sharp-eyed tour of Mexico's material culture: a chorus of green-robed ceramic Jesus figures, each clutching a gold coin to his chest; a pile of rainbow-colored broom heads; a batch of unnaturally pink pastries against the backdrop of a woman's green-checked frock; an arbor of red- and green-capped hot-sauce bottles; a pair of aged, sun-darkened hands tangled in the lavender fluff of a cotton-candy machine. The project is a study in color more than anything else -- not the glossy, romanticized color of cookbooks and travel magazines, but the commercial, street-worn, often crass color of everyday life." -- Holly Myers --LA Weekly

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