Tag Archives: Martin Parr

W2: A COLLECTION OF LIKE OBJECTS – “Vintage Bikes”

This week we explored the photography style of Martin Parr, who’s photography is full of bright and vivid photos that often delves into the relationship humanity has with technology. For this experiment, we took one of his more recent photography books, a collection of shots of remote Scottish post boxes, and used a similar approach to photograph a collection of like subjects.We decided to settle on bicycles as our single theme tying this collation together. Further limiting the scope, I elected to just include photos of vintage and/or retro style bikes.

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                   

 

This collection of photos displays a variety of vintage bicycles juxtaposed with the concrete footpaths, steel seats and busy streets of the Melbourne CBD. This prevalence of old school cycles reflects the current trend of disregarding modern, engineering and design to favour more simple, traditional styles. Perhaps this nostalgic trend is because of a want of a simpler time.

 

This photo is probably the most extreme example of this idea of the vintage, retro style infiltrating modern Melbourne. The hand written, painted sign, the calling out to the Melbourne public to consider the words of Jesus and the Christian faith, the old bronze statues in the foreground of businessmen, the milk crate on the bike. All of which comes from a time long gone, thrown into the current day, busy streets of the Melbourne CBD.