Martin Parr – A Defining Presence

Photograph by Martin Parr, Sacred Landscape

Martin Parr – A Defining Presence

Martin Parr collaborated with Punctum Press on two significant projects: contributing to Sacred Landscapes, the Giorgio Cini Foundation’s exhibition for the 2023 Architecture Biennale, where his 1970s photograph Crimsworth Dean Methodist Chapel was paired with Andrew Berman’s Vatican chapel; and writing the introduction to Antipersonnel, examining photography’s power to document the disturbing beauty of landmines through neutral yet revealing imagery.

“…the pairing of Martin Parr’s photograph Crimsworth Dean Methodist Chapel with Andrew Berman’s chapel was dictated primarily by the similarity of the architectures before us: essential and isolated, they draw the observer inward, suggesting an introspective process. For Berman’s chapel, a vast natural forecourt leads from the lagoon toward the triangular interior; the space is dark, but a shaft of light from above illuminates the altar on which the photograph is placed, depicting the Methodist church in Hebden Bridge, England. This work belongs to one of Parr’s earliest projects from the 1970s and stands as a significant and moving historical document of the life of the small church and its farming community.”

—Marco Delogu

photobook Sacred Landscape 24×30 format printed on 170 g tatami paper.

Sacred Landscapes is the project that Giorgio Cini Foundation presented in occasion of the Architecture Biennale 2023, from 18 May to 26 November.
The book tells the story of the exhibition in the woods of the Island of San Giorgio where in 2018 ten Vatican chapels had been built for the first Vatican Pavilion at a biennial of Architecture.

To tell this journey introspective were brought together ten great names in photography international – Don McCullin, Tim Davis, Marco Delogu, Graciela Iturbide, Vanessa Winship, Martin Parr, Annie Ratti, Guy Tillim, Paolo Ventura, Francesca Woodman – each place in relation to the architecture of the ten chapels that have become permanent, inside the forest of Giorgio Cini Foundation.

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Antipersonnel

Martin Parr, introduction to the book Antipersonnel, published by Punctum Press

One of photography’s great strength is its ability to catalogue and record the world in which we live. The simplicity and clarity that photography offers has both commercial and artistic possibilities. In more recent years there has been a trend towards documentary photographers isolating one particular aspect of society and exploring this in great detail. Dallaporta presents the most chilling example of this genre by photographing antipersonnel landmines. These strange ugly objects also have a certain disturbing beauty to them. We hear about the damage that landmines inflict on innocent victims long after the purpose of their planting has lapsed. They of course are hidden underground before exploding. I had never seen a landmine in real life or in a photograph until discovering Dallaporta’s images. It was a revelation. We now learn that hundreds of types of landmines exist and a variety of appearance, shape and design is incredible. Because Dallaporta has photographed these objects in the way an advertising photographer might render a shampoo bottle, he glorifies these objects and yet appears totally neutral in his approach. It is most a clever trick, so much so that we hardly notice he has done it... Martin Parr

“Antipersonnel” project was selected for the “Rencontres d’Arles” 2004 by Martin Parr (curator of the 35th edition) and exhibited in the St-Blaise chapel. His photographs can be found in collections including the Fond National d’Art Contemporain, France, and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, France.