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Photography: Family Photography: Albums

Marin Parr

    Lost Albums

     

Déjà View'. A collaboration between Martin Parr and The Anonymous Project. 144pp, hardback, 205 x 155mm.

This book is a playful conversation between two important bodies of photographic work. Each spread of Déjà View pairs one of Martin Parr’s iconic snapshots with an image from The Anonymous Project’s collection of found amateur photographs taken between the 1950s and 80s. These unnervingly similar ‘twin’ pictures remind us of photography’s greatest power: to intimately preserve everyday moments of humour, warmth, ennui and absurdity.

Martin Parr is one of Britain’s most esteemed and well-loved photographers; he has published around 40 solo photobooks and has been a member of Magnum Photos for nearly 30 years.

The Anonymous Project is dedicated to collecting and preserving mid-century colour slides from around the world. Started in 2017 by filmmaker Lee Shulman, the project brings to light Kodachrome memories that might otherwise be lost forever.

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Criticism / Debate

Mette Sandbye (2014) Looking at the family photo album: a resumed theoretical discussion of why and how, Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, 6:1, 25419, DOI: 10.3402/ jac.v6.25419 

A TINY DISTANCE

by Nicholas Nixon. 

Nixon’s work offers a remarkable demonstration of how the traditional tools of photography – a large-format camera, black and white film and contact sheets – can be used to venture into previously unexplored artistic territories. The book offers a chronological survey based on the artist’s most important series, concluding with the well-known group of the Brown Sisters that he has created over the past 40 years.