Langweilige Postkarten

Magnum photographer Martin Parr (b.1952) is a key figure in the worlds of photography and contemporary art. His acute eye for the subtle quirks and underlying continuity of human life is reflected in his avid collection of postcards gathered over 20 years. In Langweilige Postkarten he presents the pride of his 'boring' collection: 160 postcards from Germany that take you on a daringly dull tour of its autobahns, airports, hotels, factories, shops, border posts, tower blocks and new towns. Presented without commentary or introduction of any kind, and with the original captions, the postcards are allowed to speak for themselves. All made before German reunification, they provide simultaneously fascinating and hilarious insights into German social and architectural values between the 1950s and 1980s. The two nations' special relationship with concrete and the functional modernist block is nostalgically and repetitiously celebrated in postcard after postcard, and the volume provides a revealing context for consideration of the work of contemporary German art and landscape photographers.