British photographer Martin Parr may be the tallest, yet most unobtrusive figure at Stephen Daiter Gallery Friday night, leaning toward admirers, adding quiet comments. Handed fliers, Parr slides a Sharpie from the pocket of his crisp blue shirt. He has a look a photographer would affect: bemused, unremarkable, with fleeting but deadly accurate awareness. The room is crowded and the dozens of pictures on the walls range across three decades of his career, sampling from the satirical eye that has made him perhaps the most controversial of the Magnum Agency’s members. It’s hard not to type the milling observers the way this quiet man might. There are crackers and crudités and dip, and wittily enough, green gummie soldiers on their bellies on a bright red plate near his “British Food” images: of WHITE SUGAR packet, a wad of chewed gum in a glass ashtray like a kidney in a surgery tray, a bitten donut proffered in front of a homely tweed jacket, clumsily extruded baby bangers ready for a fry-up. Nearby, a man compares his need for a personal trainer to the work of an art restorer. “I just want to be lean and hard.” A little girl is cautioned against scarfing little red sugar buttons. The floor’s bright with women’s spring shoes, from skyscraper spikes to silver ballet flats to red leather cowgirl boots to knee-high rain waders. The palette’s bright, garments matching the large print of a cocktail that brims with cherries held by a hand with crimson enameled nails. It’s sugar on wry. The work may appear condescending at first, yet there’s more to it, as in the image framing three tourists whose friends are framing them as bulwarks against the Tower leaning in the Pisa sky: he turns it into Tai Chi for wisenheimers. Parr doesn’t shoot digital, but handed a camera, it goes straight to his eye and he frames what he sees. A woman iTypes into her phone as she watches him. “I try to maintain some kind of structure in my day,” another woman is saying, dredging oversized cauliflower floret into peppery dip. Closer to closing, more cups of wine doffed, more cameras are broken out, framing the framed. Parr sees me jabbing into a small orange Rhodia block, steps close. “That’s a serious notepad.” You know from iconic, I say. I have this idea, I want him to call his work “cheery,” I pose a quick case. I could go on about how just noticing the frailties and foibles of the figures is a kind of admiration, a respect, if far from love, but I know better. “Cheery,” he says after a moment, “I don’t know,” pausing, twinkling, “Cheery and depressing.” (Ray Pride)
