A Generation of Colour.

William Eggleston "William Eggleston's Guide"

Martin Parr describes “the defining moment for colour was the William Eggleston’s exhibition at MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) in New York” in 1976. “Suddenly, it seemed that with one single exhibition, colour photography had become a serious medium” (Parr, 2005, 6). The show was curetted by John Szarkowski who also wrote the foreword for the book which accompanied the exhibition entitled ‘William Eggleston’s guide’. The exhibition travelled throughout the USA receiving positive and negative criticism not just for its use of colour, but its combination with a snapshot technique that appeared somewhat random in its choice of subject. As described by Hilton Kramer in the New York Times, “Perfect? Perfectly banal, perhaps. Perfectly boring, certainly” (Kramer in Badger, 2007, 143). Whether it was a positive or negative response, in the 1970s, colour photography was becoming one of the most influential ways for photographers to work. American photographers William Eggleston, Joel Meyerowitz and Stephen Shore became pioneers of a generation that would transform our perspective of what fine art photography is.

The importance to portray reality became one of the key factors of the American movement, removing the nostalgia that had always haunted conventional black and white methods of the past. In contrast to Henri Cartier Bresson who believed colour in photography ads “a host of hazards” (Bresson, 1968, 4) to an image, Joel Meyerowitz has described colour as being “the most descriptive force in photography’s language” (Westerbeck and Meyerowitz, 1994, 401). “ I really mean the description of sensations I get from things - colour, surface, texture – by extension, my memory of them under other conditions, as well as their  connotative qualities” (Meyerowitz in Roberts, 2007, 172).

Joel Meyerowitz Street Photography

Britain in Colour

In comparison to the contemporary use of colour in American photography, “Britain was well behind America and Europe” according to Parr “Photographic Modernism didn't really happen” in Britain “only in a sort of fleeting way” (www.tate.org.uk/tateetc). The introduction of the Kodak pocket instamatic camera to British shops in 1963 was the beginning of a revolution for colour film in the commercial and amateur market. According to the information provided by the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television for their permanent display, by 1979, “over ninety percent of photographs were taken in colour film” and by 1984 “black and white film accounted for less than three percent of film sales”. In the same exhibition, colour was advertised as the revolutionary method available to all. Cameras such as the Kodak Pocket instamatic was said to be as “simple as blinking” and the Polaroid 1000 was described as the “simplest camera in the world” producing “beautiful colour images in minutes”. Created initially for the commercial market, Martin Martin Parr was one of the few British photographers during its boom period to attempt to explore the artistic and documentary values of colour photography. In 1972, whilst working as a walkie photographer, Parr and Daniel Meadows were promoted from documentary black and white photographers, to colour. This change in method encouraged a heightened response towards cultural change and how it was being interpreted.

“During that glam rock summer of teeny boppers and popcorn was the constantly unrolling, informal but never the less deadly serious, teenage fashion parade. It was something that happened on the edge. It happened in spite of the talent shows and the Miss She contest. And it happened in colour.”

 (Meadows in Williams, 2011, 7)

Aware not just of a modern society rising out of the social unease of the 1970’s, Martin Parr and Daniel Meadows also understood how this should be documented. Derived from traditions in photo-journalism and its black and white methods, Parr appears to be following in the path of his contemporary superiors, adapting artistic perceptions of the American colour photographers into a modern British culture.

Martin Parr "The Last Resort"