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Amazon.co.uk Review
There's not a word of commentary in this book, but that part is up to you. Certain things begin to stand out as you flip through the pages. Like the always blue skies. (Positive thinking!) Or the potentially interesting details that are uniformly obliterated, thanks to those polite middle-distance views and the muddy qualities of cheap lithography. There's a weird tension between the blandly generic ("Fine Food" reads the only visible sign atop a low-slung white building) and the proudly local (according to the postcard caption, this is "The famous Blue Grill on U.S. 40, St. Elmo, Ill."). In its silently subversive way, Boring Postcards USA proposes that we look more closely at this hallowed form of marketing to see what it tells us about the values and standards of mainstream American culture. --Cathy Curtis --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Packed with fascinating snapshots from a bygone age, with most apparently culled from the 40s, 50s and 60s (although in cultural terms, the 60s don't seem to have happened here - apart from horrific architecture and misguided civil engineering projects), there's a great deal to see and enjoy in this superb album of arcane Americana. Page after lavish page of aerial shots of turnpikes (these are positively exciting compared to shots of anonymous roads), empty bars and diners (promotional shots seem to mean making sure no happy customers are featured), corrugated sheds, local businesses, drive-through banks, bus stations, corporate buildings, hospitals, airports, furniture, forgotten domestic appliances and much more.
Taking care not to look down on its subjects or take a patronising approach (affection shines through, however), the minimal captions let these sometimes odd but always engaging images speak for themselves. A book to cherish - dip into it and find something new each time, or read it cover-to-cover (then get a life). Roll on the Germany edition...
For this collection Martin Parr has turned his eye to the USA. The format remains exactly the same: the only text included being the names of the various different postcard publishers whose products are included. The images, again 160 of them, are left to speak for themselves and strict criteria have been applied to the definition of "boring". Either its composition, content, or the characters featured must be arguably boring or it must be devoid of any subject matter which might conventionally be described as interesting.
Rather than comparing Boring Postcards USA to its only slightly older English cousin however, it is perhaps more appropriate to regard it within the established photographic genre which attempts to define and deal with notions of Americanness. To name but a few this long established genre includes the work of: Alexander Gardner, Lewis Hine, Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Walker Evans, Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Robert Frank and, perhaps more relevant to Parr's oeuvre, Bill Owens. Looked at in this light, as Martin Parr is certainly aware, Boring Postcards USA has some way to climb; but for all that there is an appropriateness in using images made for mass consumption as a window on the ultimate consumer society. Certainly the humour shines through: taconite for anyone curious turns out to be a type of hard rock used as iron ore and the book, perhaps in spite of itself, seems bigger than itself. "Moving on", "My Four Wheels" and the notion of "Mom and Apple Pie" all feature. On a personal note I lament the exclusion of the famous Airstream caravan but echoes of previous work do indeed sneak through. Could for example the large veneered television on which Ronald Regan appears in Bill Owens' Suburbia have in fact been a Spartan Way Imperial? Did Matthew Brady make pictures near to what would later become the Gettysburg Interchange? And most crucial of all is the American sense of humour, sometimes self conscious and reportedly devoid of irony, ready for the attentions of Martin Parr? Let's hope so, for like last year's this is a really rather special little book. I await with bated breath the advent of Boring Postcards Belgium.
Simon James
Listmania!
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