Martin Parr suffers from acute “collectomania.” Almost anything goes: souvenirs, postcards, gadgets of all kinds and, of course, photographs. But only one item drives Parr to travel the world to feed his passion for it: the photobook. With no less than 12,000 works collected over the past 35 years, his collection is among the largest—perhaps the largest—in the world, according to Simon Baker, a photo curator at the Tate Modern in London.
He began his collection while still a student at Manchester Polytechnic in the 1970s. In 1971, he purchased a first edition of Robert Frank’s Americans and Bill Brandt’s The English at Home. He gradually became aware of the lucrative market for photobooks. He admits that the total worth of his collection is “substantial,” as he told the journalist Liz Jobey in an interview published earlier this month. But selling them is out of the question.
While Parr is delighted by the boom in the photo book market, he is also, in part, responsible for it. At the time, what he was looking for only interested a small handful of (mostly Japanese) amateurs. Parr often relies on his “correspondents” around the world to help him track down hidden gems. China, he says, is the only country where the terrain is not yet exhausted.
By all appearances, the photographer feels like he’s on a mission: to compose the history of the photo book. His work makes up for the indifference of curators who, according to Parr, have not shown photobooks the importance they deserve. What does he hope for the future of his collection? That it become a permanent collection in the UK. While talking to some local institutions, Parr has yet to make any decisions.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/83acb960-a981-11e3-9b71-00144feab7de.html#axzz2wQGI8Cx7
