You know those old postcards that show the local meatpacking factory in all its cinder-block glory or the sickening color scheme of a cheap '70s motel room? Well, here they are. Beginning with panoramas of highways in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and other U.S. states, Boring Postcards segues to truck stops, restaurants, motor inns, malls, airports, military bases, factories, tools, and automobiles. Every image is certifiably boring, whether by dint of a photographer's ineptitude (dead-on views taken from too far away) or the sorry state of corporate architecture and interior design. And yet, as earnest advertisements for the American Way of Life, they all radiate a sunny faith in the uniqueness and desirability of whatever they portray.
There's not a word of commentary in this book, but that part is up to you. Certain things begin to stand out as you flip through the pages. Like the always blue skies. (Positive thinking!) Or the potentially interesting details that are uniformly obliterated, thanks to those polite middle-distance views and the muddy qualities of cheap lithography. There's a weird tension between the blandly generic ("Fine Food" reads the only visible sign atop a low-slung white building) and the proudly local (according to the postcard caption, this is "The famous Blue Grill on U.S. 40, St. Elmo, Ill."). In its silently subversive way, Boring Postcards proposes that we look more closely at this hallowed form of marketing to see what it tells us about the values and standards of mainstream American culture. --Cathy Curtis
Book Description
Boring Postcards goes Stateside – 160 exquisitely dull postcards from America.
Boring Postcards USA SYNOPSIS
Not only is Boring Postcards USA the personal scrapbook of photographer Martin Parr's favorite boring postcards from around the country, it's a fascinating-and extremely funny-folk art recording of the non-places and non-events of postwar America, be they highway interchanges or '70s-era motel rooms, shopping malls or "roadside attractions."
FROM THE CRITICS
Interiors Magazine
A Technicolor-toned paean to the optimism of postwar America.
Luc Sante
It's not every day that I swell with pride for the United States,
my adopted home, but these two books [BORING POSTCARDS and BORING POSTCARDS
USA], selections from the postcard collection of Magnum photographer Martin
Parr, almost cause me to burst my buttons. The evidence they provide--cards
ranging from the '50s to perhaps the late '70s--is incontrovertible: The US
of A leads the world in boring postcards!
— Bookforum
magazine
Art & Photography
Book Info
