Postcard Planet by Martin Parr

Postcard from the Martin Parr collection, currently in exhibition at Jeu de Paume, in Paris (France)

Postcard from the Martin Parr collection, included in the  the american version of Boring Postcards 

"Je les collectionne car j'aime le côté démocratique, populaire des cartes postales, ces petites photos que les gens envoient, gardent dans des boîtes, collent sur leurs murs. Au tournant du XIXe et du XXe siècle, on a assisté au grand boom de la carte postale. Ces images étaient les témoins du monde, quasiment les seules à représenter les lieux, la vie, les événements, d'une manière massive. On sous-estime trop la carte postale. C'est une source intarissable de documentation." Estas foram as palavras com que o fotógrafo inglês Martin Parr se referiu aos postais, numa recente entrevista ao jornal semanal e gratuito parisiense Á Nous  a propósito da exposição Planète Parr que o museu Jeu de Paume em Paris exibe desde o passado dia 30 de Junho. A colecção de Martin Parr de cerca de 20 mil postais tornou-se conhecida pela série de postais britânicos, americanos e alemães que compõem os três livros Boring Postcards, editados nos anos 90. Nestas publicações, como o próprio título indica, os postais de não-lugares sucedem-se numa monotonia irónica: estações de serviço, arranha-céus pálidos e cinzentos, auto-estradas, lavandarias, quartos de hotel vazios... Na exposição Planète Parr, podem ver-se postais “chatos” mas também alguns de cores mais berrantes, com um tom mais divertido, bizarro e grotesco. Agrupados ainda em publicações como o recente ParrWorld: Objects and Postcards, um catálogo duplo editado pela Aperture Foundation, os postais de Martin Parr são propositadamente imagens medíocres, longe dos cânones do bom gosto, que nos levam ao insólito através do que nos é terrivelmente familiar.

I collect them because I appreciate the democratic and popular aspects of postcards, these small photos that people send, keep in boxes, and stick in their walls. At the turn of XIXth and XXth century, we’ve seen the postcard boom. These pictures were the world’s witnesses, almost the only ones representing places, life, events, in a massive way. We underestimate too much the postcard. It’s a inexhaustible source of documentation”. It was with these words that the British photographer Martin Parr mentioned the postcards, during a recent interview with the weekly Paris’s free newspaper Á Nous about the exhibition Planète Parr that the museum Jeu de Paume, in Paris, has recently opened up. Martin Parr's collection of over 20.000 cards has become known by the series of British, American and German postcards, which compose the three books Boring Postcards, published in the nineties. As the title suggests, in these publications, the postcards of “no-places” follow one after another, with an ironical monotony: motor way service stations, pale and grey skyscrapers, laundries, empty hotel rooms... In the exhibition Planète Parr, at Jeu de Paume, we can see “boring” postcards but also some postcards with louder colours, and a funny, bizarre and grotesque tone. Martin Parr’s postcards, which are also assembled in publications such as ParrWorld: Objects and Postcards – a double volume published in 2008 by Aperture Foundation Editions -, are purposely mediocre pictures, far away from the good taste canons, which take us to the unfamiliar by showing extremely familiar places.