Martin Parr is a most travelled photographer. Yet, in a real sense,

wherever he photographs, he photographs England. This is not to

say he is insensitive to other cultures - Parr is no Little Englander

in attitude - but that he brings a particularly English sensibility

to the world. He has an English eye, at once satirical and

affectionate, playful and as sharp as a Savile Row crease.

He is renowned as a humorous photographer, but that should

not be taken to mean lightweight. The best English humorists

wield humour as a weapon. Silly walks and funny voices mask

existential angst. We wince at his pictures as much as smile.

Like the best humorists, Martin Parr flirts - sometimes

dangerously - with cliché and stereotype to make his point.

And his point is usually deadly serious. It pricks. It can draw

blood. Think Of England ... the title is a dead giveaway.

Parr is describing an England that is in the mind. The England

of floral dresses, suburban lawns and seaside sauciness. Every

tourist's view of England. Safe, chintzy middle-class or jolly

yeoman working-class England with at least one foot in the past.

You will look in vain here for grey, wet skies, inner-city problems,

genetically modified countryside, or an England which is as

ruthlessly commercial or as much of a cultural melting pot as the

United States. For Parr's England is a fiction, an idea of England.

Perhaps an idea of an idea of England. Martin Parr, a thoroughly

contemporary artist, is critiquing representation. It can't

possibly be true, can it? It's so colourful for a start. One does

not readily associate Day-Glo colours with England, except on

chocolate boxes or English Tourist Board posters, but that's

part of the point.

Ideas about England emanate from society, are filtered back into

society and play their part in shaping society. Ideas, conceptions

- and misconceptions - are acted upon. Cliché becomes part of

the wider truth, part of the contemporary scene and not just

nostalgic irrelevance.

So Martin Parr is subjecting clichés about England to his

particular scrutiny, piling one upon another like a veritable

Russian doll of clichés so we might have the pleasure of peeling

them away. However, let's not forget that he observed these

things - every floral dress and pink iced cake - albeit with

a surgically selective eye.

Photography is essentially a superficial art in the strict sense:

it deals with the surface of things. But in the hands of someone

like Martin Parr, so attentive and attuned to the nuances

of surface - the aspect of things, the visible face of society -

so much more than surface is revealed. Gerry Badger