Marina Planas

What Martin Parr would have seen, 2017.

Arrangement of 18 images. Enlarged details of postcards.

1.05 x 2 m

Fons Arxiu Planas

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Since its invention, photography has transformed our relationship with the world around us. Through the capture and conservation of ephemeral moments, photography has become a way of artistic and documentary creation. However, photography, in its essence, is an act of selection and framing. In Marina Planas creation, she chooses what to include and what to exclude from the frame, giving meaning to what is inside the focus and, by omission, to what is left out. This selection is not merely technical; it is a profoundly philosophical act. Each image is a manifestation of the photographer's perspective, his or her unique vision of the world. However, in the history of art, visions have also been recognizable and have been reinterpreted “in the style of”.

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The composition collects more of a look than the images as a collection. This project is an exercise of selection and deep understanding of perception. It consists of the creation of a new cosmology of reframes extracted from the images of the Planas Archive. The role of the artist in this project is that of order, classification and symbolic relationship.

 

Marina Planas focuses on irony and certain details to generate a new discourse. The abstraction of detail and the technical texture of the image provoke an anonymity among the tourists, referencing the loss of individuality within the logic of mass tourism. This selection of everyday scenes of the "standard tourist" in a bikini, at the beach or the pool, etc. Corresponds to a classification of the body languages of tourism and the seriality of photographic archives.

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Marina Planas’ work lies in the interpretation and creation of a Neo-Archive, originating from the corporate photographic archive of her grandfather and his vast collection of units related to photography and tourism. Philosopher Susan Sontag pointed out that photographic archives can become "instruments of power," shaping our perception of reality and conditioning our understanding of the world.

 

Within the indigestible mass of the vast, uncatalogued Archive, people can only see what they already know. This is why M. Planas approaches it

through the lens of Martin Parr, intuiting in the irony of recognition, within the archive photographs, a contemporary vision of tourist aesthetics. Photography, at its core, is an act of selection and framing. For the construction of these series, the artist has chosen 18 details from among 30,000 postcards belonging to the Planas Archive.

 

Postcards are illustrations of memories and souvenirs, and they are also testimony to the activation of the circulation of a cultural and historical memory; therefore, they inevitably serve as signs of historical processes.

 

Text: Alelí Mirelman