Martin ParrTemplate:Postnominals (23 May 1952 – 6 December 2025) was an English documentary photographer[1] and photojournalist. He was known for his photographic projects that take an intimate, satirical and anthropological[2] look at aspects of modern life, in particular documenting the social classes of England, and more broadly the wealth of the Western world.
His major projects were rural communities (1975–1982), The Last Resort (1983–1985), The Cost of Living (1987–1989), Small World (1987–1994) and Common Sense (1995–1999).
Since 1994, Parr had been a member of Magnum Photos.[2] He had around 60 solo photobooks published, and had featured in around 90 exhibitions worldwide – including the international touring exhibition ParrWorld,[3] and a retrospective at the Barbican Arts Centre, London, in 2002.[4]
The Martin Parr Foundation, founded in 2015, and registered as a charity in 2015[5] opened premises in his hometown of Bristol in 2017. It houses his personal archive, his collection of British and Irish photography by other photographers, and a gallery.[6]
Born in Epsom, Surrey,[7] Parr wanted to become a documentary photographer from the age of 13 or 14.[8] He cited his grandfather, George Parr, an amateur photographer[7] and fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, as an early influence.[2][9]Template:Rp
Parr struggled academically at school and failed both his History and English A-levels.[8]
Parr met his wife, the writer, researcher and speech therapist, Susie Parr (née Susan Mitchell) at Manchester Polytechnic in the early 1970s.[8][10] They had one child, Ellen Parr (born 1986).
Parr was diagnosed with myeloma in May 2021,[11] and died at his home in Bristol on 6 December 2025.[12][13]
Photographer
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Parr has said of his photography:
The fundamental thing I'm exploring constantly is the difference between the mythology of the place and the reality of it.[9]Template:Rp ... Remember I make serious photographs disguised as entertainment. That's part of my mantra. I make the pictures acceptable to find the audience but deep down there is actually a lot going on that's not sharply written in your face. If you want to read it you can read it.[9]Template:Rp
Parr's aesthetic was close-up, through use of a macro lens, and employing saturated[14] colour, a result of either the type of film and/or use of a ring flash. This allows him to put his subjects "under the microscope" in their own environment, giving them space to expose their lives and values in ways that often involve inadvertent humour.[2] His technique, as seen in his book Signs of the Times: A Portrait of the Nation's Tastes (1992), has been said to leave viewers with ambiguous emotional reactions, unsure whether to laugh or cry.[15]
Manchester Polytechnic, 1970–1973
Parr studied photography at Manchester Polytechnic from 1970 to 1973 with contemporaries Daniel Meadows and Brian Griffin.[16]Template:Rp Parr and Meadows collaborated on various projects,[17]Template:Rp including working at Butlin's as roving photographers.[18] They were part of a new wave of documentary photographers, "a loose British grouping, which, though it never gave itself a title have become variously known as 'the Young British Photographers', 'Independent Photographers' and the 'New British Photography'."[9]Template:Rp[16]Template:Rp
Rural communities, West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and Ireland, 1975–1982
In 1975 Parr moved to Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire[9]Template:Rp[19] where he would complete his first mature work.[20] He was involved with the Albert Street Workshop, a hub for artistic activity which included a darkroom and exhibition space. Parr spent five years photographing rural life in the area, focusing on the Methodist (and some Baptist) non-conformist chapels, a focal point for isolated farming communities that in the early 1970s were closing down. He photographed in black-and-white, for its nostalgic nature and for it being appropriate to his celebratory look at this past activity.[19] Also, photographers at that time were obliged to work in black-and-white to be taken seriously, colour being associated with commercial and snapshot photography.[19] His series The Non-Conformists was widely exhibited at the time and published as a book in 2013.[21][22] Critic Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian, said "It's easy to forget how quietly observational Parr was as a black-and-white photographer."[22]
In 1980 Parr married Susan Mitchell and, for her work, they moved to the west coast of Ireland.[23]
Parr's first publications, Bad Weather (1981) published in 1982 by Zwemmer with an Arts Council subsidy, Calderdale Photographs (1984) and A Fair Day: Photographs from the West Coast of Ireland (1984), all featured photographs from mostly northern England, and Ireland, in black-and-white. He used a Leica M3 with a 35mm lens;[19][24] although for Bad Weather he quickly switched to an underwater camera with a flashgun.[25]
Soon after, Parr photographed a chain of pubs in his series Yates Wine Lodge (1982-83).[8]
The working class, The Last Resort, 1982–1985
In 1982 Parr and his wife moved to Wallasey, England, and he switched permanently to colour photography, inspired by the work of US colour photographers, mostly Joel Meyerowitz, but also William Eggleston and Stephen Shore, and also the British Peter Fraser and Peter Mitchell.[9]Template:Rp Parr has written that "I had also encountered the post cards of John Hinde when I worked at Butlin's in the early 70s and the bright saturated colour of these had a big impact on me."[26] During the summers of 1983, 1984 and 1985[9]Template:Rp he photographed working-class people at the seaside in nearby New Brighton. This work was published in the book The Last Resort: Photographs of New Brighton (1986) and exhibited in Liverpool and London.[13][27] It was first exhibited at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 1986.[8]
Although John Bulmer had pioneered colour documentary photography of Britain, from 1965,[28]Gerry Badger has said of The Last Resort:[29]
It is difficult from a perspective of almost a quarter of a century to underestimate [sic] the significance of The Last Resort, either in British photography or Martin Parr's career. For both, it represented a seismic change in the basic mode of photographic expression, from monochrome to colour, a fundamental technical change that heralded the development of a new tone in documentary photography.
Karen Wright, writing in The Independent, has said "He was attacked by some critics for his scrutiny of the working classes, but looking at these works, one merely sees Parr's unflinching eye capturing the truth of a social class embracing leisure in whatever form available."[30]
The middle class, The Cost of Living (1987–1989)
In 1985 Parr completed a commission for the Documentary Photography Archive in Manchester to photograph people at supermarkets in Salford, Retailing in the Borough of Salford, which is now held at the archive.[31]
He and his wife moved to Bristol in 1987,[32] where they lived until Parr's death in 2025. During 1987 and 1988 he completed his next major project, on the middle class, who were at that time becoming increasingly affluent under Thatcherism. He photographed middle-class activities such as shopping, dinner parties and school open days,[33] predominantly around Bristol and Bath[9]Template:Rp in the southwest of England. It was published as his next book The Cost of Living (1989) and exhibited in Bath, London, Oxford and Paris.[34]
His book One Day Trip (1989) featured photographs taken when he accompanied people on a booze cruise to France, a commission from Mission Photographique Transmanche.[35][36]
Mass tourism, Small World (1987–1994)
Between 1987 and 1994 Parr travelled internationally to make his next major series, a critique of mass tourism,[37][38][39][n 1] published as Small World in 1995. Revised editions have been in print since.[40]
Between 1995 and 1999 Parr made the series Common Sense about global consumerism. Common Sense was an exhibition of 350 prints, and a book published in 1999 with 158 images. The exhibition was first shown in 1999 and was staged simultaneously in forty-one venues in seventeen countries.[42] The pictures depict the minutiae of consumer culture, and are intended to show the ways in which people entertain themselves. The photographs were taken with 35mm ultra-saturated film for its vivid, heightened colours.[42]
Global Warming
Before he died, Parr had been working on a major retrospective, titled Global Warming, at the Jeu de Paume, Paris, to be opened 30 January 2026.[8] The exhibition planned to span 50 years of his photographic work.
From 2013-2017, Parr served as president of Magnum Photos.[45][8][46]
Collector
Photobooks
Parr was a collector and critic of photobooks.[47][48][49] His collaboration with the critic Gerry Badger, The Photobook: A History (in three volumes) covers more than 1,000 examples of photobooks from the 19th century through to the present day. The first two volumes took eight years to complete.[2]
Other items
Parr also collects postcards, photographs and various other items of vernacular and popular culture[47] such as wallpaper, Saddam Hussein watches and prostitute advertising cards from phoneboxes (items with a photograph on them).[48][50] Here too, items from his collections have been used as the basis for publications and exhibitions. Since the 1970s, Parr has collected and publicised the garish postcards made between the 1950s and 1970s by John Hinde and his team of photographers.[18]
Parr was invited as guest artistic director for the annual Rencontres D'Arles festival of photography,[8] which critic Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian, described stating: "That year's Arles festival, in its range and ambition, remains the standard by which all subsequent Rencontres have been judged."[51]
Parr was artistic director of the newly established Bristol Photo Festival, scheduled to open in 2021. However in July 2020 he quit, due to his involvement with a 2018 reissue of the photobook London by Gian Butturini, after a campaign by an anthropology student at University College London, who called a pairing of photographs in it racist.[54][55][56][57]
Film and television
Parr was involved in making television, and documentary and other films. Some examples are listed below:
From 1990 to 1992 Parr collaborated with Nick Barker, taking photographs to accompany Barker's film Signs of the Times.[58]
In 2003 Parr was the subject of and appeared extensively in the Imagine BBC One TV series episode "The World According to Parr", directed and produced by Rebecca Frayn, and hosted and executive produced by Alan Yentob.[50]
He was cameraman on the film It's Nice Up North (2006) with comedian Graham Fellows (as his character John Shuttleworth). The film is a comic documentary filmed over several years in Shetland.[59]
In 2007 Parr took part in BBC Four's The Genius of Photography, a six-part documentary series exploring the history of photography.[7] In 2008 he was one of three judges on the Channel 4 series Picture This.[7]
In 2014 Parr created "Turkey and Tinsel", a 60-minute deadpan and often hilarious observational video documentary about faux Christmas in small town England.[60]
The Martin Parr Foundation was founded in 2014. It opened premises in Bristol in October 2017.[6][63] The Foundation houses Parr's own archive, and his collection of prints and book dummies made by other photographers—mainly British and Irish photography, and work by several photographers from abroad who have photographed in the UK.[6] There is a gallery open to the public—its first exhibition was Parr's Black Country Stories[63]—and it is a hub for talks, screenings and events.[64] The Foundation is located in Paintworks in southeast Bristol. Parr was the Foundation's main source of income.[6]
Reception
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The German photographic curator Thomas Weski has said:[7]
Martin Parr is a chronicler of our age... Leisure, consumption and communication are the concepts that this British photographer has been researching for several decades now on his worldwide travels... Parr enables us to see things that have seemed familiar to us in a completely new way.
Parr's signature is his ability not only to isolate the most evocative of human details, but to elevate such visual fragments to that of the wider societal signpost or glyph.
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Retrospectives, private publications, and very limited publications
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Papers and zines
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Postcards
Home and Abroad. London: British Council, 1994. Template:Catalog lookup link. A set of postcards, as the catalogue of a travelling exhibition. Text by Brett Rogers. Not to be confused with the book of the same title.
Love Cube. [Stockholm]: Gun Gallery, 2007. Template:ISBN. Twenty-seven cards in a box, with a booklet. Photographs by Parr, text by Johan Croneman.
Royal Wedding. Paris: Verlhac, 2011. Template:ISBN. Set of 10 postcards inside small album. Text (in French) by Stéphane Bern.
Royal Jubilee. Set of 10 postcards inside small album.
London: Pavilion, 2012. Template:ISBN. Text (in English) by Stéphane Bern.
Paris: Verlhac, 2012. Template:ISBN. French-language version. Text (in French) by Stéphane Bern.
Books with others
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Books edited or with contributions by Parr
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Tony Ray-Jones. Paris: Maison CF, 2019. Template:ISBN. Photographs by Tony Ray-Jones. Edited and introduced by Martin Parr.[90]
I Grandi Fotografi: Magnum Photos. Testimonianze e visioni del nostro tempo. Milan: Hachette Fascicoli, 2005. Template:Catalog lookup link. In Italian.
Grandes fotográfos Magnum Photos 20. [Barcelona]: Salvat [2007]. Template:ISBN. In Spanish.
1989–1991: The Cost of Living, Royal Photographic Society, Bath, 1989/1990; The Photographers' Gallery, London, 1990; Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 1990; Gallery Jacques Gordat, Paris, 1991.[91]
File:Martin Parr DOX Prague-3.JPGThe DOX Centre for Contemporary Art. Prague, exhibition of the British documentary photographer, Martin Parr. "Assorted Cocktail"10. 2 - 16. 5 20112007: Retrospective, Month of Photography Asia, Singapore. Parr's exhibition was the main show.[95]
2013/2014: Only in England: Photographs by Tony Ray-Jones and Martin Parr, Media Space, Science Museum, London, September 2013 – March 2014;[98] National Media Museum, Bradford, March–June 2014; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, February–June 2015.[99] With Parr's The Non-Conformists and material from the National Media Museum's Tony Ray-Jones archive, curated by Parr and Greg Hobson.
2014: Black Country Stories, New Art Gallery, Walsall and Wolverhampton Art Gallery. Commissioned by Multistory,[100] Parr photographed the four boroughs of the Black Country, documenting the traditions and communities that live there. This work produced the photobook, Martin Parr: Black Country Stories (2014), along with four films, including Teddy Gray's Sweet Factory (2011).[101][102][103][104]
2014: Paris, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris[105]
2017: Sony World Photography Awards & Martin Parr – 2017 Exhibition, Somerset House, London. Three rooms dedicated to Parr, with "black and white images from his early career, alongside some of the artist's most talked about work, books and films and original exhibition posters." Also shown were a "selection of the winning, shortlisted and commended work from the World Photography Organisation's annual photography competi[ti]on."[107]
↑Russell Miller, Magnum: Fifty Years at the Front Line of History (London: Pimlico, 1997; Template:ISBN). Here at Google Books. Retrieved 10 April 2014.
↑"Fashion Magazine" (PDF), Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. Retrieved 9 April 2014. Template:In lang A press release about Fashion Magazine (and incidentally Fashion Newspaper).
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