MARTIN PARR - ITALY. REGGIO EMILIA

Martin Parr was born in Epsom, Surrey, UK, in 1952.

He has captured the most obvious aspects of society for Storie urbane (Urban stories) associated with his view of the rich and well-to-do city.

The author has focused on the details, the objects and the gestures, investigating the social and cultural spaces. By venturing into the coffee bars, restaurants, food stores and markets of the non-European Union immigrants Martin has collected a rich series of glances that tell the story of day-to-day life in the city with irony and detachment.

The persons are the main players of the social rituals such as Sunday meals eaten at the restaurant, breakfast taken at the bar or when drinking an apéritif. The workplaces and the city represent the contexts where day-to-day life can be identified; even the events, as for example, the carnival, become framing features which define the author's investigation project, which Parr tells us personally, using these words:

My project for the European Photography Week will be presented as a collection of photographs I have taken, in bars and of people in the street, food, shops and the carnival.

The underlying theme of this project is based on the collection of a number of features which I feel, in particular, represent Reggio Emilia and Italy in general, and I will assemble them together, as a collage.

Reggio Emilia seems to me to be the typical Italian town, with a very well defined historical centre, a feature that you find in any town in this country and that is a distinctive mark of Italy.

Reggio Emilia is a pleasant town, the people are very open, the food is good... what more can you what?

The weather has been dreadful during my visit, but this makes me feel at home because it is very English. It has rained non-stop, and the only sunny day was on the day I photographed the carnival; despite everything I was lucky. I found exactly what I expected here in Reggio Emilia, even if I have never visited this town before, even though I have visited Italy many times and have taken many photographs in this country. Italy is a very stylish place; in fact, the people dress very elegantly. It is almost too beautiful here … that's it, Reggio Emilia is perhaps too attractive!!

Now, as we are talking, we are in this wonderful bar with fantastic food and excellent coffee: this is indeed a typical Italian place, not just Reggio Emilia. The only mystery for me about Italian bars is drinking coffee while standing. When you are walking all day, you also feel like sitting down for a while, isn't that so? Something that Italians never do. In any case here there is no surcharge if you sit down, it's not like Venice, where you pay three times the price if you drink a coffee sitting down.

This shows that Reggio Emilia is not really a tourist town, but here too, as in the rest of the towns and cities in the world, first of all the bar is a meeting place, a social value. This is the sense I will give to my work in the project for the EPW.

In addition, I did not know, until I arrived in Reggio Emilia, that Ghirri was born here; I am familiar with Ghirri's work and I think he is an excellent photographer, who contributed a great deal to international photography. I was very pleased to discover this and to find a relationship between his work, this project and this town".

Official web site: www.martinparr.com.

A number of solo exhibitions

• Reina Sofia, Madrid, 2003
• 20/21 Essen, Germany, 2003
• MEP Paris, 2005
• Presentation House Gallery, Vancouver, 2005
• PhotoEspana, Madrid, 2005
• Bon Marche, Paris, 2005
• Die Kunsthalle, Mannheim, 2005
• Rocket Gallery, London, 2005
• Montreal Festival of Photography, 2005
• Nicola von Senger Gallery, Zurich, 2005
• Kamel Mennour Gallery, Paris, 2005