In the most recent issue of
Aperture, Martin Parr presents the predominantly unseen body of color photography that European practitioners were making contemporaneously with Americans such as William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, Joel Meyerowitz and Joel Sternfeld. Eggleston is somewhat historically credited as the artist who brought widespread acceptance to the vernacular of color photography with his landmark exhibition
William Eggleston's Guide, which was exhibited at MOMA in 1976. Parr discusses why this assertion is somewhat exclusionary and unfair when surveying the history of color photography. Included in the issue is work from Danish photographer
Keld Helmer-Petersen, whose aesthetic use of color is strikingly similar to that of Eggleston's, however, which predates Eggleston's work by at least 20 years. With the intention of widening the discourse of international color photography, Parr hopes to "re-assess the short and confused history of recent color photography by showing the work of European innovators who have been overlooked and eclipsed by their U.S. counterparts."
Other photographers included in this survey include Italian photographer
Luigi Ghirri, Dutch photojournalist
Ed van der Elsken, Spanish photographer
Carlos Pérez Siquier and British photographers
John Hinde and
Peter Mitchell.
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From Top To Bottom:
Keld Helmer-Petersen, Untitled 15, 1940's
Carlos Perez Siquier, Muñeca (Doll), 1974
Peter Mitchell, Eric Massheder, Leeds, 1975
John Hinde, from the
John Hinde Butlin's PhotographsAll Images © The Artists