Pékin Fine Arts is pleased to present an exhibition of selected works by UK photographer Martin Parr. Beaches and Luxury is Martin Parr’s first exhibition after joining the gallery.

Parr’s work is well known to audiences in China, where Parr has visited numerous times in the last two decades, on various photo projects related to China.

Martin is not only a photographer, but also an editor and curator and a member of the Magnum co-operative. He has published over 60 books

of his own work and edited another 25. He is currently editing a series of books for Nazraeli photo press in the USA, and does much work to promote new photographers; when, for example he was the artistic director of the Arles Photo Festival in France and the Brighton Photo Biennial in the UK.

He is currently updating the History of the Photobook , Vol 3, to be published next year.  He is also working on a large-scale museum exhibition, with the assistance of WassinkLundgren, the Dutch photographers, of a survey of Chinese photo books from the 19th Century to the present.

In his on-going series Luxury shot round the world, in London, Moscow, Paris, Beijng, Rio, Dubai and other cities, Martin addresses the different ways people display their wealth at art fairs, car shows, race tracks, and other venues, subverting the traditional proclivity of photography to depict portraits of poverty. Rather than celebrating wealth, however, Parr is implicitly criticizing the drain on the world’s resources as middle classes grow – and spend - exponentially, amidst a global economic downturn.

Parr’s on-going love affair with shooting people on beaches began in his native UK, where he recorded an “island people” particularly in love with all beach related leisure activities. Parr describes his beach photography as similar to the work of street photographers in other cultures. Most recently, Parr continues to pursue his fascination with beach culture, now in China, where a rapidly expanding middle-class today jam-packs every summer beach in China. In 2012 Parr’s world-wide beach photo work will be published in a book, titled Life’s A Beach to be launched in Paris this fall and exhibited at the Lyon Bienniale of Photography 2012.