Langweilige Postkarten: Boring Postcards Germany [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

Boredom amounts to the same in any culture, but English photographer Martin Parr, who curates Langweilige Postkarten (Boring Postcards Germany) as he did its precursors, Boring Postcards and Boring Postcards USA, has elevated it to an art form in all. What this new collection illustrates graphically is the remarkable similarity between post-war Britain and Germany, in terms of cube-shaped (rather than Cubist), grey, functional designs, unaccountably celebrated in card form as urbanscapes to cherish. Which, with retrospective post-modern irony, they are. Such kitsch could be over-sold, with rhapsodising commentary, but Parr has allowed the imagery space, which is the only way such a project could succeed. Consequently, the cumulative effect is considerable, as you start to manoeuvre through the monotony, eager to spot subtle difference, defining features, and socio-historical meaning. Very quickly, the eye starts to sort the images of East and West, not just through the makes of car (Trabant in the GDR, anything but in the West), but the architectural designs, people's clothes, even the image selection. Roads are straight, service stations, or Autobahn-Raststätten, severe (one stunning card reveals a particularly drab canteen with people sitting meekly at tables, despite all the food displays being closed), petrol filling stations abound, and the key word seems municipal. Even hotels, indulgers of weary flesh, resemble bunkers, or faceless public housing.

Arrayed as if in a family photograph album, the images recall a bygone age of post-war reconstruction, when the emphasis was on logistics: transport, accommodation, and a general, unfussy, symmetrical solidness, symbolised by bad design, and worse upholstery. It's both awful and awe-inspiring, this industrial sprawl and set-square architecture, the bleakly familiar caravan-lined coastline. There is also, presumably to the delight of the curator, a run-of-the-mill, mock-Alpine gasthaus named Hotel Parr. And yet, this is life, as rich in its resurgent functionality as Gaudi's flamboyance. Best enjoyed with a tepid flute of Liebfraumilch, and Kraftwerk on the stereo. --David Vincent

Magnum photographer Martin Parr is a key figure in the worlds of photography and contemporary art. He has been an avid postcard collector for twenty years and 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. They were all made before German reunification and provide 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.

160 daringly dull postcards of Germany from the 50s to the 80s. Magnum photographer Martin Parr is a key figure in the world of photography and contemporary art. He has been an avid postcard collector for twenty years. In the final instalment of the Boring Postcards trilogy, he presents the pride of his boring collection: 160 postcards from Germany. Using the same approach as the two previous Boring Postcards (which featured postcards from the UK and the USA), this new book takes you on a daringly dull tour of the autobahns, airports, hotels, factories, shops, border posts, tower blocks and new towns of Germany. All the cards were made before German reunification, and provide 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.

For a postcard to qualify as sufficiently boring to be included, either its composition, its content, or the characters featured, must be arguably boring or the photograph must be absent of anything which might be described as interesting. Boring Postcards Germany is the crowning glory of the trilogy, the most outrageous and the most boring book of them all. (All of the text for the book will be in German, including the title on the front cover. There will be a belly band, however, giving the English title, Boring Postcards Germany.)

Martin Parr is arguably Britain's key contemporary photographer, with a unique point of view and unmistakable signature, with a critical and popular following in the worlds of art, fashion and journalism. He has been widely published and exhibited internationally. His work features in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, amongst others. Books of his photographs include Bad Weather (1982), The Last Resort - Photographs of New Brighton (1986), The Cost of Living (1989), Small World (1995) and Common Sense (1999). He is also the author of the Boring Postcards (1999) and Boring Postcards USA (2000) books for Phaidon. He has been a member of the Magnum photographic agency since 1994. Photographer's Residence: Bristol, UK