Martin Parr looked like “a naff birdwatcher”, according to his editor Wendy Jones. His appearance was so unassuming that he told me during a recent public talk, that while he was taking pictures during a recent seaside trip, some passersby remarked that he was “a bit like Martin Parr”. Unbothered by glitz and glamour, for more than five decades Parr purposefully pursued the most boring things he could find – he was unapologetic about the excitement he saw in a perfect cup of tea, a plate of beans on toast, or a woman filling up her car at a petrol station. He also knew that, with time, these supposedly dull things would become interesting.
Parr took delight in looking, without flattery, at the things you thought you already knew. In a Parr picture, beauty is not always graceful – the overflowing rubbish at New Brighton beach, the cucumber and cheese sandwiches wrapped in clingfilm at Shalfleet church fete (with the sign, please do take ONE cherry tomato). He made the mundane magnificent with his panache for saturated colours and surprising compositions. He was masterful at capturing the unexpected and unchoreographed interruptions that reveal the unpolished truth of the ordinary moment. He understood that the fluorescent glow of a chip shop could be as revealing as a cathedral; that the colour of a plastic beach bucket could anchor the entire mood of a nation; that the way a stranger holds a sandwich or an ice-cream speaks of class, of longing, of place, of the small stories that batter or buoy us daily. This radical attentiveness – this celebration of the overlooked – is what made Parr one of the most human photographers of our time.
Parr had an unremarkable early life, with family trips to the local sewage works where they enjoyed the local history, the views – and the occasional ice-cream. He wasn’t academically successful at school but discovered photography early on, and by his final year at Manchester Polytechnic, he was already doing things differently – his final show was an installation recreating a living room. It divided opinionamong those who saw it, but it was typical of Parr’s innovative, original approach to the medium. He wanted everyone to feel at home in, and with, his pictures.
He didn’t always get it right, of course, and he received criticism as well as praise over the years. Parr’s acceptance by the prestigious photo agency Magnum in 1994 was controversial, since many of the old guard, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, didn’t like his style and less serious attitude towards documentary photography. He was accepted, rejected and then eventually accepted on a single vote to Magnum – all on the same day. In 2014, he would become the agency’s president. Parr knew how absurd life’s contradictions were and through his photographs he gave us a way to embrace them.
Parr will be fondly remembered for his sense of humour. The quintessential British photographer, he poked fun at Britishness – possibly one of the reasons his photography is so popular in France. Some saw his work, especially his decades of pictures working-class leisure activities, as sneering, but it came from a place of deep love and tenderness for the nation’s idiosyncratic, eccentric culture and fading traditions. Though he travelled to places ranging from Benidorm to Mexico City, Dakar to Moscow and Pyongyang, it was Britain he knew and understood best. He showed the British a society that was unmistakably theirs.
Parr’s devotion to photography was unwavering. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of photographic history – he published 100 books of his own and donated a portion of his staggering collection of more than 12,000 photobooks to Tate in 2017. But he was firmly focused on the future generation too. In 2014, he founded the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol to support British photographers; the public exhibition space and library opened in 2017 and has exhibited artists at the start of their career, including the Turner prize-nominated Rene Matic, Sebastian Bruno and Ian Weldon, alongside era-defining image-makers like Lee Miller, Ajamu X and Chris Kilip. His influence across generations after him is indelible.
Parr loved to travel and take pictures, and he was at almost every photography exhibition and event. After being diagnosed with cancer in 2021, he walked with the support of a rollator – I once saw him hurl it playfully against the wall, exclaiming “crash” with great relish. He took photography seriously – he truly believed in it – but as successful as he was, he never took himself too seriously. His ongoing series of gently self-mocking self-portraits are just one example of that.
Parr was drawn towards fun, towards leisure and levity, things that are ineradicably human desires – and our small vanities, our simple pleasures, our unguarded absurdities. Like an anthropologist armed with Kodachrome, he stepped into the social rituals that shape us, that he too was part of: the queues, the holidays, the celebrations, the markets, the inveterate longing we carry into each public space. He didn’t hold these things at arm’s length. He was in there too, unpretentiously, with the curiosity of someone who never stopped being surprised by the world.
