Identify A Photo From A Description

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twoodo

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Hi,

I've been looking for a photo for some time now and thought the wise heads on a photography forum might be able to help. I don't know if this is going to be laughingly simple or if you'll just throw your hands up and say 'What are you asking us to do???'

Let's try. A number of years ago I saw a photo of an elderly couple sat at a table in a cafe. The feeling you get from the photo is fairly depressing: they don't seem to be talking to each other - almost as if each regrets the marriage they've endured for so many years. I'm sure it's only the two of them in the photo and *think* it's in black and white. The feel is very much of a British couple/cafe in the 1960s - in my long image seaches a lot of American stuff turns up (it could be that it is American but I don't think so).

I've also got it in my head that it is a relatively famous photograph - in fact the reason I saw it was because it was used for either album artwork or a book cover.

A bit of a longshot I suppose.
 
Hi and welcome to TP

Does not immediately ring bells....... :thinking: :thinking: :thinking:

But I do wonder why you are looking.....or should that be still looking as you mentioned "looking............. for some time now"
 
Hi,

Thanks for the reply. Depressing as it sounds I thought I might see if I could get a print of it.
 
Bingo!

Glad my useful description of it being only two people and in black and white didn't throw you off the scent!

Follow up question if I may?

Is there a trusted source to buy good quality prints from?
 
twoodo said:
Bingo!

Glad my useful description of it being only two people and in black and white didn't throw you off the scent!

Follow up question if I may?

Is there a trusted source to buy good quality prints from?
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Perhaps ask at the source?
Martin Parr

or

Martin Parr Foundation – Prints

PS it looks like just maybe it was limited edition (of 1 ???) here New Brighton, Merseyside from The Last Resort by Martin Parr on artnet So as I suggested now you have confirmed @garryknight 's identification................ask what Martin Parr and/or his foundation have to say on the matter of an authorised print available to buy???
 
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twoodo said:
Glad my useful description of it being only two people and in black and white didn't throw you off the scent!
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Nor the mention of the 60s. :D

twoodo said:
Is there a trusted source to buy good quality prints from?
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No idea, sorry. It will be in his New Brighton book, The Last Resort, but that might be a bit small if you were thinking of hanging it.
 
Ah - I was on a different Martin Parr website! Will definitely shoot him a message.

Thanks both for your help!
 
twoodo said:
Ah - I was on a different Martin Parr website! Will definitely shoot him a message.

Thanks both for your help!
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Best of luck and hopefully your search in at an end and that making contact will yield an affordable print for your wall.
 
What a perfect distillation of how utterly ghastly this country could be back then. But I suspect the couple are actually having a whale of a time and spent the rest of the week gassing about what a lovely day out it had been.....
 
All you need to do now, is Photoshop a phone into her hands and it could be any photo from resent years.
Ps, obviously you can't do that to someone else's photo.
 
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Nostromo said:
All you need to do now, is Photoshop a phone into her hands and it could be any photo from resent years.
Ps, obviously you can't do that to someone else's photo.
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If you asked a youngster today, what is the woman in the photo doing. Their reply would possibly be, " she is looking at her farcebook". They grew up with mobile phones, and probably don't realise they only became popular in the last decade or so.
 
At the risk of stoking up flames: what is it that makes that picture interesting, to those who find it so?
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
At the risk of stoking up flames: what is it that makes that picture interesting, to those who find it so?
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It's evocative of my own experiences of being in places like that. Perhaps a rainy day at the seaside when I was little and being forced to sit in a dreary cafe when I'd rather be in the arcades, on the beach, or at the fun-fair. It's a picture upon which you can overlay a multitude of narratives. It's not a pretty picture. It's wonky. and the composition probably doesn't fit within what is generally classed as desireable. But none of that really matters. It's the sort of picture that I enjoy.
 
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AndrewFlannigan said:
At the risk of stoking up flames: what is it that makes that picture interesting, to those who find it so?
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The lovely lampshades. :LOL:

It's the interaction between the couple and most of all the Britishness of it all. In the book it's a bit of an oddity though, which may be why it's the first picture in the book to contrast the older generation's seaside experience with that of the younger folk at the time who appear in brightly lit colourful and often messy scenes. An example of how a body of work can tell a different story to a single picture taken from it.

Or I might be talking arty b*****ks!

I think often you eitehr 'get' a picture or you don't, and having it explained by someone who does 'get' it can kill it in the way explaining jokes doesn't make them any funnier to people who don't get them in the first place.
 
I like it.
It reminds me of my late father in law when he retired. He had no hobbies.
By then he had given up 40 years of smoking after contracting throat cancer.
 
It is imo an awful picture but I suppose that it just isn't to my taste. Anyway, apart from the awfulness I can't look at it without feeling as if I'm going to slide off my chair.

If I simply had to buy that picture I'd have to either straighten it or set fire to it.
 
I think it's actually quite a powerful picture, but I'm not at all sure I like his work. Yes, he has a a good eye, and yes his artfully amateurish look works well, and yes it gives a picture of how many lives were lived, which will be a grand resource for future historians.

But it also feels arty and worthy in a slightly laboured way, which can get a bit tedious.....
 
What do you straighten it to? If you take the rail at the top of frame as the datum, it's straight!

Can't say I'd have it on my wall TBH. Apart from anything else, the woman bears a resemblance to Mrs Nod's grandmother.
 
Nod said:
What do you straighten it to? If you take the rail at the top of frame as the datum, it's straight!

Can't say I'd have it on my wall TBH. Apart from anything else, the woman bears a resemblance to Mrs Nod's grandmother.
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If you think that's straight I'm happy for you :D

I suppose there's holding the camera level straight and not holding the camera level and then there's perspective and not holding the camera level to make the subject look right and I suppose artistic licence too. So I suppose it's all up for grabs but non of his alters my feeling that this isn't straight and it makes me want to slide away...

I have my own version and views on straight and this isn't it.
 
Is it what it is, because of who he is.
What I mean is, if an amateur/hobby photographer posted a photo like this in here, what would the critique be. It's not straight or it looks wonky, you can't really see the old ladies face (it's quite in shadow), I don't like the white table cloth in the bottom right (it draws the eye away from the couple at the table), the hands have been chopped off of the lady on the left etc.
 
Nostromo said:
Is it what it is, because of who he is.
What I mean is, if an amateur/hobby photographer posted a photo like this in here, what would the critique be. It's not straight or it looks wonky, you can't really see the old ladies face (it's quite in shadow), I don't like the white table cloth in the bottom right (it draws the eye away from the couple at the table), the hands have been chopped off of the lady on the left etc.
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That's because most are only looking at the technical when critiquing photos rather than what the photo conveys.

Love or loathe Martin Parr, this very thread is proof that he's doing something right.
 
He's been given a CBE. That must prove something or other too.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
At the risk of stoking up flames: what is it that makes that picture interesting, to those who find it so?
Click to expand...

In non-arty b******s terms, to me, when I look at it, I think "I know how he feels" :) I wonder if there's another chap opposite the other woman? In other words, it is an image I can spend more than 2 seconds looking at. It makes me feel something and think about the content. It's almost like it should be one of my memories. Show me an Icelandic waterfall, or a sunset-overthesea-with-foregroundrock and I feel nothing other than a sigh and an urge to look at something else.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
He's been given a CBE. That must prove something or other too.
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He sold a lot of his collection/archive to fund his photography foundation, puts a fair bit back into photography in other ways, promotes photography and encourages 'emerging' photographers.
 
Harlequin565 said:
In non-arty b******s terms, to me, when I look at it, I think "I know how he feels" :)
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I've heard it said that we would be living in a very boring world if we all liked the same things. ;)
 
Nostromo said:
Is it what it is, because of who he is.
What I mean is, if an amateur/hobby photographer posted a photo like this in here, what would the critique be. It's not straight or it looks wonky, you can't really see the old ladies face (it's quite in shadow), I don't like the white table cloth in the bottom right (it draws the eye away from the couple at the table), the hands have been chopped off of the lady on the left etc.
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Which IMO tells you a lot about "amateur/hobby photographer" but not just in here, much more widely, "I like it" is not the only definition of "good"
 
When you realise that he was influenced by the postcards of John Hinde, and wanted to convey the 'human condition' amongst British 'working class' people of the 80s, you can possibly appreciate what he was trying to do. But he wasn't just poking fun at them, as he later did the same thing with the 'middle classes' of the time in a collection which became the book, The Cost of Living.

This is all covered in episode 3 of the BBC4 series, Britain in Focus, in which Martin appears and discusses both books.
www.bbc.co.uk

BBC Four - Britain in Focus: A Photographic History

Eamonn McCabe explores the fascinating and remarkable story of British photography.
www.bbc.co.uk www.bbc.co.uk
 
sirch said:
"I like it" is not the only definition of "good"
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This is something I've long wanted to bottom out but every definition I've come across suggests otherwise.

The only variation on that theme seems to be "It affects me strongly". There is, to me, nothing wrong with defining an image in those terms but we often see claims that there's a more objective way of defining the "goodness" of an image. My view is that if such an objective toolkit exists it should be more widely shared.
 
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