A Brit par excellence, Martin Parr spent his life documenting the glorious pettiness of his fellow countrymen and, beyond them, the whole of modern humanity. With his saturated colours and close-ups, he turned beach holidays, buffet lunches and tourist traps into sarcastic yet affectionate portraits of how we actually live. Never cruel, he zoomed in on the ketchup, the trash we leave behind, the sunburn and the shiny plastic souvenir, and made one laugh before making one think. Parr from ordinary, he was in a class of his own. As Martin Parr passed away last year, the Musée du Jeu de Paume, like FOAM a couple of weeks earlier, is honouring him with a large retrospective. Familiar pictures, but also some hidden gems, in both colour and black and white. I particularly enjoyed his “Bored Couples” series, showing couples looking utterly bored with one another in public places, restaurants above all. I also savoured the image of a lady at a Republican Convention, proudly holding a trump action figure that “says 17 phrases” — likely the full extent of his vocabulary in English. Watching the pictures of Martin Parr is watching ourselves, in all our greatness and absurdity. Au revoir Martin Parr. Above par, below par, you were never average and you raised the bar.
