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WebLinks: Contexts for Exploring Visual and Verbal Texts |
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Chapter 5 - Moving Pictures |
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What makes a photograph artistic? Look at more of Parr's work, as well as some of the other photographers' work at the sites below. What is distinctive about Parr's work? Are other photographers more "artistic" than Parr? Why?
http://www.martinparr.com/
On Martin Parr's home page, you can view slideshows of all his past collections and get the most up-to-date glimpse of what he's up to now—the site includes photographs that have not yet appeared in magazines or museums.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blast/about/ask/martinparr_transcript.shtml
Blast, an initiative started by Britain's BBC to get teenagers involved in the arts, recently interviewed Parr about his career in photography. In the course of the interview, Parr talks about everything from establishing a relationship with his subjects, to his technique, to what he does in his spare time. In the process Parr demystifies the image of the successful artist.
Martin Parr famously takes the "ordinary" for his subject matter, like sporting events and trips to the dentist. He isn't the first photographer, however, to make sublime art out of the ordinary—check out some of these other artists, who have done a similar thing in other times and places:
http://www.temple.edu/photo/photographers/arbus/arbus.htm
Diane Arbus (1923-70) was known for highlighting the strangeness hiding amid scenes of everyday life.
http://www.temple.edu/photo/photographers/spring03/photographers/jamessaul/rdc/
Roy DeCarava (1919-), who lives and works in New York City, has documented some of the major movements in African American history, including Jazz in Harlem and Civil Rights in the South.
http://www.unicef.org/salgado/
http://www.peterfetterman.com/artists/salgado/salgado_sm.html
Sebastião Salgado, who considers himself a photojournalist rather than an artist, has spent most of his career capturing the full scope of the global human experience. The first of these collections focuses on children, and the second focuses on workers.
http://www.museumca.org/global/art/collections_dorothea_lange.html
Of the photographers who documented the effects of the Great Depression in the West, it was Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) who produced the most indelible images. Her photographs from the 1930s testified to our great capacity for both desperation and survival.
http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/bio/a1540-1.html
William Eggleston (1939-) does for places what these other photographers have done for people—he makes the "ordinary" locales of the South tell extraordinary tales of emotion and experience.
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