I looked up the reviewers' comments on Amazon. The person who gave the negative review said the book was the wrong size. That's got to tell you something.

As you say, they depict what people have to put up with. Is that what triggers a sense of affection for the people that divides critics?

Lyn,
Parr has taken the documentary image into the postmodern global world.He does go looking for the junk of modern consumer life built around lesiure, tourism and luxury---as opposed to the older tradition of capturing third-world suffering and poverty. It is not a distant sneer of the working class or working poor; nor is he helping us----the affluent middle class professionals in the inner city who buy these kind of books----to look down our noses at the ugliness that is modern life, as many critics claim.

You could follow Parr and use the (digital) camera to critically examining everyday life on the Gold Coast. Such a project would cause a degree of discomfort amongst the inhabitants, judging by your remarks on a previous post. Such a project would construct the Gold Coast as a little bit weirder than most realize. It would be an interesting project for the Gold Coast Council to fund!

Gary,
Parr has a new project---photographing the new Russian wealthy. On that post at the Magnum blog he says:

raditionally poverty has been the front line for the concerned photographer, I am happy to reverse this, and for many years have photographed the wealth of the West. These images will all accumulate towards a suite of photographs entitled "Luxury" I am convinced that the non stop growth and the wealth we create has many problems associated with this.

Sounds like the Australia Institute guy with bald head. What's his name? Oh, Clive Hamilton.

I've often thought of it. No way would the council fund such a thing. It might endanger tourism.

You're right though, it's begging to be done. Dad was a photographer and person of the sea and he was fascinated by the expanses of terracotta roof tiles here. He said it was like the surface of the sea which is beautiful but threatening, and you just know there's some gorgeous and some scary shit going on underneath. Which there is.

I think about doing it all the time, don't you worry about that, as we say up here. For some reason though, I think of it as a b/w exercise, cutting out the crap in a different way to Parr perhaps? B/w is so very good at capturing otherwise invisible wrinkles.