After the expression "labour market", shall we speak of the "holiday industry"? This is the question that Martin Parr seems to be asking us through his "Life's Beach" exhibition, which inaugurates the photo quay.

With his sharp, almost cynical eye, the most punk of British photographers paints a panorama of all the quirks and eccentricities of mass tourism with a series of shots worthy of his reputation as a chronicler of modern times. Because it is not for nothing that we sometimes use the term "break" to qualify the holidays, this period when we decompress from all the constraints of daily life, from all these conventions to which we comfort ourselves day after day. So, once on vacation, we leave all that aside to let our body speak and its insatiable desire for comfort and frenzy. We take out the barbecues on the beach, the panties in the colors of America, the plastic balloons, the deckchairs and the eye patches to indulge in sessions of entertainment and idleness that Martin Parr has sublimely captured, we letting face iconic hilarious situations and expressions.

But as one explores this exhibition, the initial euphoria gradually gives way to an ounce of unease. Because when you zoom out, it is no longer the expression of the carefree grandmother that you see, but the landscape of people crammed on the beach of the Ocean Dome in the greatest promiscuity. We also realize that this beach is purely artificial and tailor-made to satisfy all excesses, even to the detriment of reason. We can therefore no longer see the exhibition in the same way: it is no longer scenes of amusement and pleasure that we see, but a series of proofs of the excess of humans, of their tendency to superficiality. which is embodied in a series of products and situations that seem to be ready-made creations of marketing campaigns. Even vacations and their purposes have become commodities?

As with each exhibition by the British photographer, we end up coming out with an anthology of contradictory feelings. Guess that was his goal. Immortalizing the human and all its facets and subtleties, isn't that after all the role of the photographer? It is in any case that of Martin Parr...