Martin Parr (born in 1952) – undoubtedly one of the most established and recognised British documentary photographers of our time – chooses the Museo Civico Archeologico in Bologna to present the exhibition project Short & Sweet, which he directly curated, together with Magnum Photos, after the great public success recently achieved at Mudec – Museo delle Culture in Milan.
From 12 September 2024 to 6 January 2025 the exhibition Martin Parr. Short & Sweet – produced by 24 ORE Cultura – Gruppo 24 ORE in collaboration with the Museo Civico Archeologico del Settore Musei Civici Bologna and Magnum Photos, and with the patronage of the Municipality of Bologna – presents more than 60 photographs specially selected by him for this project and flanked by the corpus of images from the Common Sense series that made him famous, to retrace, also through an unpublished interview by photography historian and critic Roberta Valtorta, the career of one of the most famous photographers of our time.
Beginning with Parr’s early black and white works and ending with the themes dearest to him – from ‘beach lives’ to tourism – the exhibition project, curated in first person by the artist, displays over 60 photographs selected by Parr especially for this project and presented together with the corpus of images from the series that made him famous, Common Sense, with over 200 photographs from the 350 exhibited in the 1999 exhibition of the same name that explore the plasticised and tawdry reality of the western world.
Through an itinerary within his best-known projects, the unprecedented documentary style that has characterised the language of the British photographer Martin Parr for over fifty years becomes a litmus test for observing contemporary society and its most contradictory folds, those that belong to the western world, particularly Europe, rendered by a sharp photographic chronicle, unfiltered and unrhetorical, at times recounted with biting sarcasm; more often presented with irony and humour. Parr’s images capture comical or unexpected moments, offering a critical but also amusing look at everyday life for all of us.
Civic Archaeological Museum – Via dell’Archiginnasio, 2 – Bologna
