No sé qué puede sorprender más, si una exposición de fotografía de Martin Parr en Tirana o el asombro de los albaneses al ver como ha cambiado y evolucionado su tierra durante los últimos veinte años.
La Galeria Kombertare e Arteve ( Albanian National Gallery of Arts) presenta la primera exposición de Martin Parr en Albania y la primera que se muestra esas imágenes al público. Sin duda, es el mejor sitio para comenzar ya que sus habitantes son los protagonistas de las fotografías y de la transformación del país.
Martin Parr describe en su blog como fue uno de los primeros afortunados en visitar el país. Él formaba parte de un grupo que tenía previsto visitar lugares de interés arqueológico en otoño de 1989, teniendo en cuenta que por estas fechas la entrada a periodistas y fotógrafos estaba censurada y que muchos de ellos lo eran. A pesar de los inconvenientes durante su estancia, logró introducirse en los lugares frecuentados por la gente de la calle y fotografiar escenas que de otra forma hubieran quedado relegadas en la memoria de los que las vivieron.
Parece mentira que aquellas fotografías escondidas se muestren ahora de forma pública en el mismo lugar donde se prohibieron. Considero que es un buen síntoma de cómo respira y cómo ha logrado este país avanzar en las últimas décadas aunque seguramente todavía queden huellas visibles e invisibles de lo vivido.
Martin Parr nos comenta como en la inaguración de la exposición asistieron altas personalidades e incluso el primer misnistro Sali Berisha. Parr le preguntó qué es lo que sentía al mirar esas fotografías de su país durante los años noventa a lo que Berisha respondió “es como mirar a un brazo amputado”.
Una de las fotografías más populares es esta en la que se puede apreciar un chico jugando al ping pong y otros dos al ajedrez, todos metidos en el juego, en el entretenimiento que les separa momentáneamente de dónde están.
The National Gallery of Arts welcomes in its temporary exhibitions wing, from the 15th of June to 7th of August 2011, the photo exhibition of the well known British photographer Martin Parr. This is the first personal exhibition of Parr in Albania; it is also the first time that images from the series Albania 1990 show to the general public.
As the important art critic Gerry Badger has written “Martin Parr is an exemplary photographic figure at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Not quite an out-and-out modernist, not quite a postmodernist, he is a leading light, indeed a founder, of the New European Colour Photography School, yet is also a member of Magnum, photojournalism’s premier agency.” This, according to Badger, makes Parr “familiar with the contemporary treadmill of the successful photojournalist,” but at the same does not prohibit him from working in a “conceptual” way, showing in art galleries as well as purely photographic galleries.
Parr is a photographic man of great learning, “a genuinely versatile photographer, one who lives, sleeps, and breathes photography in all its manifestations, from base function to lofty art. Martin’s whole modus operandi... depends upon slipping deftly between photographic worlds, thereby instinctively addressing such issues as the role of the photographer, the status of the photographic image in our culture, and indeed the very nature of contemporary culture itself. Parr’s whole career, and more pertinently his imagery, asks questions about high and low culture, art and commercialism, the duplicity of the photographic image, and (not a whit incidentally) about the lives we live today.”
This important exhibition opening in the Albanian National Gallery is composed of three series: Albania 1990, Common Sense 1995/1998 and Small World 1989/2007. The photo-installation, Common Sense, is one of the largest Parr has ever completed in Europe, in this case using 270, slightly larger than A3 size images.
Albania 1990
In 1990 Martin Parr travelled to Albania on the first tourist trip into the country after the fall of the Berlin wall. He says that: “this was an architectural tour and out of the 14 places, 12 turned out to be journalists.” He was able to roam freely early in the morning or when there was limited amount of time off. Although still quite recent these images depict a different world from the Albania we know now.
Common Sense 1995/1998
In 1999 Parr produced this grid of close up images, in the brightest of colours that depict the details of the modern western world that has become so familiar. From close ups of fast food, through to woman's jewellery, it is an index of the flotsam and jetsam of the contemporary world.
Small World 1989/2007
With his ongoing study of global tourism Martin Parr shows how the image of a famous resort is often a contradiction of the reality. With tourism as the biggest industry in the world, Parr shows us what a surreal world it has become, often drowning in people as sites become victims of their own success.
Este texto está extraído de la página de La Galeria Kombertare e Arteve de Tirana.
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¡me encanta Martin Parr!
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