Martin Parr

Up and Down Peachtree

With a wry sense of humor and a vivid color palette, British photographer Martin Parr has documented cultural expressions and the quirks of consumption and leisure the world over. Parr’s ability to find irony and humor in the most commonplace objects and situations allows him to hone in with unflinching precision on the ways mere surfaces of the things we buy and the activities we engage in betray deeper truths of our society.

In Atlanta, Parr was drawn to the oddities and eccentricities found across the city’s high- and low-brow culture. Over two visits in October of 2010 and April of 2011, he photographed up and down Peachtree Street, the city’s unavoidable north/south thoroughfare, creating a colorful panorama that captures Atlanta’s multifaceted population and interconnected subcultures. With a biting sense of critical wit, he closely examined the city’s boisterous public life, using the Georgia State Fair and the Atlanta Steeplechase as anchors at either end of a spectrum of civic activity. Parr is the only photographer not based in the United States to receive a Picturing the South commission, and he relished in his status as an outsider, employing his uncanny sensibility to capture the peculiarities of conspicuous consumerism in the details of everyday life. His photographs are uncommonly direct and formally wrought. Whether focused on an art exhibition opening, a corndog vendor, or the staff of an iconic diner, his camera revealed humor, fascination, and affection simultaneously.

As a cosmopolitan city situated in a region of the country with a distinct identity, Atlanta was a perfect place for Parr to explore his interest in the ways that our increasingly homogenized world merges with local culture. Though Parr describes his approach somewhat apathetically—“I just come across what I come across and put it all together”—he seamlessly collated and contrasted the city’s diversity of social classes, political persuasions, and cultural expressions into a freewheeling depiction of a contemporary Southern city.

View all works in the commission.