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For his show "Acid Raid" at Michael Milburn Galleries Parr made 47 photocopies of self-portraits - some drawn in ink, and some in pencil. Having done this he destroyed the originals, as is frequently done with printing plates, and exhibited the photocopies as originals.
The implications of these acts are legion. Photocopying implies the series - syntagmatically as well as paradigmatically. It can "digitise" the flow of existence through its ability to triumph over the instant. For it is not so much a tool of the age of mass reproduction - the copier is not generally as prolific as Benjamin's term implies - but is the instrument of instant reproduction without parallel.
In Parr's hands the differences between it and both hand printing and the printing press become vividly apparent. The printing press makes many copies, the copier relatively few. Like hand printing, the press is labour intensive and there is a time lag between deciding what to print and seeing the outcome - the copier is virtually instantaneous. In this sense each of Parr's works remains a portrait - an attempt to pin down a particularity in time.
However, as well as freezing the instant, photocopying transforms it.
In the case of the photocopier the shape and size of copy is rigidly determined by the machine - but the "original" may be enlarged or diminished to fit. There is thus an obvious yet deceptive uniformity in its products. And most importantly of all, its output has not hitherto attracted the aura that the products of even the most previously despised print genres - for example, the comic book - are able to command through being rare, original or "aesthetically"