As a photographer, Martin Parr has travelled widely. Yet wherever he goes, it is England that he photographs. He is far from insensitive to other cultures—there is nothing “Little Englander” about him—but he looks at the world with a distinctly English sensibility. His affectionate, satirical, amused eye is as sharp as the crease in a pair of Savile Row trousers.
Parr is renowned for his humour, which should never be confused with frivolity. English comedians wield humour as a weapon; comedy registers existential anxiety. His pictures make us wince as much as smile. Like the finest comedians, he flirts, sometimes dangerously, with stereotypes to achieve an often profoundly serious aim. His work stings and draws blood.
La Tendre Albion: the title speaks for itself. Parr depicts England as we imagine it: floral dresses, gardens and seaside kitsch, the perfect tourist vision. A cautious, old-fashioned, lower-middle-class England, or its brash working-class counterpart, with at least one foot in the past. We search in vain here for rainy skies, urban tensions, genetically modified countryside, relentlessly commercial England or a cultural melting pot comparable to the United States.
Parr's England is, of course, a fiction—an idea of England. As a contemporary artist, he critiques representation itself. None of this is true, is it? It is so colourful! Bright colours are not readily associated with England, except on chocolate boxes or tourism posters. The idea of England emerges from English society, and once distilled, re-enters that society and shapes it. The cliché becomes part of a larger truth, belonging to the contemporary scene rather than being a merely nostalgic turn.
Parr subjects England's clichés to his penetrating gaze, collecting and stacking them like Russian dolls for us to enjoy discovering. Yet he observed all these things—every floral dress and candy-pink cake—with a keen eye and surgical precision. Photography is a superficial art in the literal sense: it attempts to show the surface of things.
