Budapest Photo Festival Opens

The exhibition hall Műcsarnok (‘Art Hall’) welcomes visitors with a special premiere – Life’s a Beach – at the opening exhibition of the 6th edition of the Budapest Photo Festival.

Martin Parr, British photographer and the star of MAGNUM PHOTOS, is one of the best-known representatives of European contemporary color photography, whose work is on show in Hungary for the first time.

A tireless chronicler of the present, for more than four decades he has been exploring the phenomena of everyday life, from the British perception of the weather, the ideal home, or shopping and entertainment habits, to capturing the national character.

The exhibition Life’s a Beach, held in two rooms of the Art Hall in Budapest, features a selection of his observations from popular beach resorts. Parr has had an intimate relationship with the seaside since childhood, often visiting the beaches of northern England with his amateur photographer grandfather, and later returning as a young photographer to show how the average Englishman holidays.

For Parr, the seaside is an exceptional public space where the absurdities of general human behaviour and the local oddities blend seamlessly together. People can relax, indulge in their pleasures, sunbathe or read, and the photographer can indulge in experiments with the camera.

The exhibition offers a glimpse into the different periods of his four-decade career, from The Last Resort (1986), a series set on the seafront of New Brighton near Liverpool, which marked the beginning of his international career, to No Worries (2012), a series documenting the port cities of Western Australia. Whenever he was concerned with stereotypes surrounding Europeans, or bizarre manifestations of consumerism, or even what the English thought of England, Parr would go for a walk along the coast.

He visited the Spanish resort town of Benidorm, the beaches of Belgium, the shores of Lake Garda, the Crimea, Latvia, and then left Europe to Goa in India, the beaches of South America, including the famous Copacabana, and Bali in Indonesia. Life’s a Beach can be interpreted as a gentle Gulliver's warning. The photographs not only inform, make us smile or amaze, but also draw our attention to the changes in the world, for instance our ideas about recreation or the contradictions of mass tourism. The exhibition was released by the cooperation of British Council.