A special edition of Martin Parr’s photography exhibition, in collaboration with Magnum Photos

FROM 23 MARCH TO 30 JUNE 2024, PALAZZO CALLAS EXHIBITIONS

LIFE’S A BEACH
Photographic exhibition of Martin Parr
in collaboration with Magnum Photos
Palazzo Callas Exhibitions,
March 23 – June 30, 2024
Opening: Friday 22nd March, 11:00am

Beaches are places where people can be themselves, revealing their humanity in unique and surprising ways.
A special and authentic dimension where you can relax and show off all those slightly eccentric nuances of your personality, along with often extravagant and bizarre behaviors.

In the UK you are never more than seventy-five miles from the coast, so it is no surprise that there is a strong British tradition of seaside photography. Martin Parr began photographing the subject in the 1970s in the UK and has gone on to photograph beaches all over the world, including Argentina, Brazil, China, Spain, Italy, Latvia, Japan, the USA, Mexico and Thailand, offering a unique and surprising insight into the customs and rituals of different countries and cultures.

Writes Martin Parr:

“I have photographed the beach for many decades, documenting every aspect of this tradition, including close-ups of bathers, restless swimmers caught in mid-dive, and the never-ending picnic in progress on the sand. […] You can learn a lot about a country by observing its beaches: across cultures, the beach represents that rare public space where the most extravagant and bizarre national behaviors can be found.

Here on Lake Garda we are particularly expert when it comes to beaches. This special edition of LIFE’S A BEACH shows us Martin Parr at his best, with his amusing clichés, rituals, traditions and hilarious absurdities linked to beach life and is enriched by some unpublished photographs of Parr himself taken in Sirmione and on Lake Garda. We are thus privileged to see ourselves portrayed by the unsurpassed irony of the lens of the great British photographer.

The exhibition is enriched by a special setting that accompanies the public into a relaxing seaside atmosphere.

Martin Parr is one of the most renowned documentary photographers of his generation. With over 100 published books and another 30 edited, his photographic legacy is already well established. Parr also works as a curator and editor. He has curated two photography festivals: Arles in 2004 and the Brighton Biennial in 2010. He recently curated the exhibition Strange and Familiar at the Barbican Centre in London.

Parr has been a member of Magnum since 1994, serving as its president from 2013 to 2017. In 2013, he was appointed visiting professor of photography at Ulster University. Parr’s work has been collected by many of the world’s leading museums, including the Tate, the Pompidou, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2017, he founded the Martin Parr Foundation.