Martin Parr (23 May 1952 – 6 December 2025) was an English documentary photographer and photojournalist. He was known for his photographic projects that take an intimate, satirical and anthropological 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. He had around 60 solo photobooks published, and had featured in around 90 exhibitions worldwide – including the international touring exhibition ParrWorld, and a retrospective at the Barbican Arts Centre, London, in 2002.
The Martin Parr Foundation, founded in 2015, and registered as a charity in 2015Martin Parr Foundation https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-search/-/charity-details/5050353/charity-overview Accessed 30 September 2022 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.
Photography
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. ... 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.
Parr's aesthetic was close-up, through use of a macro lens, and employing saturated 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. 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.
Manchester Polytechnic, 1970–1973 Parr studied photography at Manchester Polytechnic from 1970 to 1973 with contemporaries Daniel Meadows and Brian Griffin. Parr and Meadows collaborated on various projects, including working at Butlin's as roving photographers. 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'."
Rural communities, West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and Ireland, 1975–1982 In 1975, Parr decided to move to Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire where he would complete his first mature work. 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. 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. His series The Non-Conformists was widely exhibited at the time and published as a book in 2013. 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."
In 1980, Parr married Susan Mitchell and, for her work, they moved to the west coast of Ireland.
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; although for Bad Weather he quickly switched to an underwater camera with a flashgun. Parr also photographed a series of pubs in 1982/83, called Yates Wine Lodge.
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. 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."
During the summers of 1983, 1984 and 1985 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. It was first exhibited at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 1986. For these first colour photographs in 1982 he had bought a Plaubel Makina 67 with a fixed wide-angel lens, a camera, which just recently had entered the British market. Shortly after he began using flashlight (again). He still loved black and white, "but once I moved to colour, I never went back" — except for a few occasions like a trip to India and an invitation to China by its government in 1985, alongside two other photographers, where he took his final photographs in black and white.
Although John Bulmer had pioneered colour documentary photography of Britain, from 1965, In the 2009 reissue of The Last Resort Gerry Badger has emphasised its significance for British photography and Parr's own path: "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." This was underscored by the controversy it inspired, with some critics, upset about the alleged exploitation and exposure of the working class for the photographers' own gain.Karen Wright. ""In The Studio: Martin Parr, photographer. Photography has never had a bigger audience. It's cheap and cheerful...". The Independent, 28 June 2012.Colin Jacobson. "Friend or Foe?". Creative Review, Nov. 2000. Cited in Williams 2002, p. 275.
Beginning in the early-1980s he also got the chance to exhibit his work outside the UK, and in bigger venues, such as the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York (1985), The Last Resort was presented at the Serpentine Galleries, London (1986), an exhibition at Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany followed the same year, and also a first appearance at the Festival d'Arles. In Japan he had his first solo show in 1988.Williams 2002, p. 331 f.
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.
The young family moved to Bristol in 1987, where they lived until Parr's death in 2025. Parr felt he had to answer the criticism he got for The Last Resort, and wanted to photograph the middle class, which was seldom done before. Although at that time becoming increasingly affluent under Thatcherism, a middle class was largely lacking in Liverpool. During his next major project in 1987 to 1988 Parr photographed middle-class activities such as shopping, dinner parties of the Conservative Party, craft fairs and school open days, predominantly around Bristol and Bath in the southwest of England. It was published as his next book The Cost of Living (1989) and exhibited at the Royal Photographic Society in Bath, and then toured London, Oxford and Paris.
Telegraph Magazine and Signs of the Times (1991) For Telegraph Magazine he got a commission to photograph cafés for a summer edition in 1988, and thought of being paid and expenses covered as a "breakthrough" moment. 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.Danièle Méaux. Mission Photographique Transmanche. Défense et illustration d'un territoire. Portraits de pays illustrés. Un genre phototextuel. ECLLA - Etudes du Contemporain en Littératures, Langues, Arts, Saint Etienne 2017, online (Oct. 2021), in French, with a list of all photographers who took part and their subjects. The following decade he continued to work for the conservative outlet, "it was by far the most interesting magazine using photography." Even longer a running project was possible, photographing the social life of the small community of Chew Stoke extended over a whole year.
Nicholas Barker, a documentary film director working for the BBC, had seen The Cost of Living, and asked Parr, if he wanted to collaborate on a series on how the British lived, he called Signs of the Times. Parr agreed and took portraits and still lifes of the homes, which were accompanied by a quote from their respective interviews. The photographs were used as inserts in the episodes, and collectively made up a book of the same name, released the following year. Parr appreciated the mixed reactions the series provoked.
Mass tourism, Small World (1987–2025) Since 1987 Parr travelled internationally to make his next major series, a critique of mass tourism."Portfolio: Martin Parr", The Independent.The book Small World is reproduced at the Magnum Photos website. After some exhibitions earlier the book Small World. Photographs 1987–1994 was published in 1995. Revised editions have been in print since.
He was visiting professor of photography at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki between 1990 and 1992.
Global consumerism, Common Sense (1995–1999) 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. 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.
Retrospective views since 2000 In 2002, when Parr turned 50, a retrospective perspective set in. In two decades, he published about 20 books. The first comprehensive monograph about him was released in 202, written by his "longstanding friend and colleague" Val Williams; an updated edition was published in 2014.Val Williams. Martin Parr. London: Phaidon, 2002, ISBN 0-7148-3990-6; the paperback edition follows in 2004; for the citation see presentation of the 2014 edition on Parr's homepage. Accessed 25 July 2026. In 20205 his agency Magnum (with Hachette) published a monograph in the long-running Italian series I Grandi Fotografi in 2005, with the images chosen by Parr himself and text by Alessandra Mauro (who edited Tutta Roma the following year). A French edition followed in 2007, and a Parr survey was added to the Phaidon 55 series, for which renowned American photo expert Sandra S. Phillips provided the text.Sandra S. Phillips. Phaidon 55: Martin Parr, Phaidon Press, London, 2007. The small survey was reissued several times and translated into other languages.