Martin Parr: From the Pope to a Flat White, Ireland 1979–2019
Introduction by Fintan O'Toole.
Forty years of transformation and upheaval: compiling Martin Parr’s longstanding love affair with Ireland
A Wall Street Journal 2020 holiday gift guide pick
Martin Parr (born 1952) has been taking photographs in Ireland for 40 years. His work covers many of the most significant moments in Ireland’s recent history, encompassing the Pope’s visit in 1979, when a third of the country’s population attended Mass in Knock and Phoenix Park in Dublin, to gay weddings in 2019.
Parr lived in the West of Ireland between 1980 and 1982. He photographed traditional aspects of rural life such as horse fairs and dances, but also looked at the first hints of Ireland’s new wealth in the shape of the bungalows that were springing up everywhere, replacing more traditional dwellings. During subsequent trips to Ireland he explored the new estates around Dublin, documented the North and showed how, after the Good Friday agreement, the Troubles became the focus of a new tourist boom.
The final chapter of this book portrays a contemporary Dublin where start-up companies are thriving, the docks area is being gentrified and where icons of wealth and modernity are ubiquitous. Ireland has also now voted to allow both abortion and gay weddings, developments that would have been unthinkable 40 years ago. Parr published a book of his original black-and-white photographs in 1984. A Fair Day had an introduction by Fintan O’Toole, who subsequently became Ireland’s leading cultural commentator.
Featured image is reproduced from 'Martin Parr: From the Pope to a Flat White, Ireland 1979–2019.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Wall Street Journal
William Meyers
“Martin Parr: From the Pope to a Flat White, Ireland 1979-2019” records how quickly traditional Irish culture was replaced by exactly that. Mr. Parr, now 68, has an eye for humbug and the incongruous, like the farmers in “Westport Horse Fair, County Mayo” (1983) standing with their horses outside the alien Nevada Burger fast-food restaurant. His two giant plastic cones of soft ice cream in “Limerick, County Limerick” (1997) are a fine example of his visual wit. However humorous, Mr. Parr is never demeaning. The last picture is a two-page color image of a cup of “flat white,” a coffee drink like a latte, emblematic of upscale privilege.
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"Allihies, Kilnamanagh, County Cork" (1997) is reproduced from Martin Parr: From the Pope to a Flat White, Ireland 1979–2019, the photographer's wry documentation of change in Ireland over the past four decades. "Irishness has always been to some extent a performance," Fintan O'Toole writes, "whether of piety or of revelry, of sophistication or of simplicity—even, in Parr’s images of Troubles tourism, of tragedy. It continues to be so even in a globalized world of flat whites and yoga sessions… From the Pope to a Flat White brings together Parr’s photographic record of an Ireland that is now almost unrecognizable from the land he first visited in 1979: a chronicle of what we have lost, how we have grown and what we have gained." continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.5 x 12.5 in. / 128 pgs / 57 color / 40 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $55.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $77 ISBN: 9788862087292 PUBLISHER: Damiani AVAILABLE: 10/13/2020 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA LA
Martin Parr: From the Pope to a Flat White, Ireland 1979–2019
Published by Damiani. Introduction by Fintan O'Toole.
Forty years of transformation and upheaval: compiling Martin Parr’s longstanding love affair with Ireland
A Wall Street Journal 2020 holiday gift guide pick
Martin Parr (born 1952) has been taking photographs in Ireland for 40 years. His work covers many of the most significant moments in Ireland’s recent history, encompassing the Pope’s visit in 1979, when a third of the country’s population attended Mass in Knock and Phoenix Park in Dublin, to gay weddings in 2019.
Parr lived in the West of Ireland between 1980 and 1982. He photographed traditional aspects of rural life such as horse fairs and dances, but also looked at the first hints of Ireland’s new wealth in the shape of the bungalows that were springing up everywhere, replacing more traditional dwellings. During subsequent trips to Ireland he explored the new estates around Dublin, documented the North and showed how, after the Good Friday agreement, the Troubles became the focus of a new tourist boom.
The final chapter of this book portrays a contemporary Dublin where start-up companies are thriving, the docks area is being gentrified and where icons of wealth and modernity are ubiquitous. Ireland has also now voted to allow both abortion and gay weddings, developments that would have been unthinkable 40 years ago. Parr published a book of his original black-and-white photographs in 1984. A Fair Day had an introduction by Fintan O’Toole, who subsequently became Ireland’s leading cultural commentator.
