Back in April, we wrote about Lacock by Martin Parr, the late British photographer's last major commission, ahead of its opening at Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire, UK. The exhibition has now opened to the public, and the National Trust and CEWE have now released a set of behind-the-scenes photographs that change the story slightly, in the best possible way.
Because what these new images show isn't really the village of Lacock. It's Martin Parr himself, working. And for anyone who's ever picked up a camera, that turns out to be the more interesting picture entirely.
The man behind the lens
In several of the shots, taken by National Trust photographer Andy Cochrane, Parr is seen exactly as you'd expect: ring flash mounted on his camera, braces holding up his trousers, sleeves rolled, crouched low over a trestle table of prize vegetables at a village hall show or crouched even lower to photograph a scarecrow on a roadside chair. It's the same posture he'd held for 50 years, in front of everyone from holidaymakers in New Brighton to tourists at the Louvre.
What's different, and what makes these images poignant, is the walking frame. It's there beside him in shot after shot: at a cricket pavilion, in a flag-strewn cricket field, at a photography talk where he's pictured photographing his own audience. Parr was seriously ill throughout this project. He kept working anyway, on foot, with mobility aid in tow, getting exactly the shots he wanted.
There's a craft lesson buried in this, separate from the obvious human one. None of these images show Parr fighting his equipment or his circumstances. He's not awkwardly shooting from a chair or compromising his eye-level. He's still getting low, still getting close, still working the angle properly. The walking frame might have meant slower movement between shots, but it never meant lazier composition once he arrived.
Other images show the exhibition coming together: two technicians in purple gloves hanging large framed prints, including that prize potato and the Union Jack lollipop seller we covered last time, and a wider shot of a contact-sheet wall, rows and rows of small prints pinned up for editing.
Unglamorous insights
That wall is worth dwelling on. It's the unglamorous part of any photographic project: hundreds of frames, most of them ordinary, a handful of them extraordinary, and someone has to sit down and work out which is which.
Among the small prints visible on that wall: scarecrows, village processions, a woman holding a vegetable marrow, a man in a horse costume, an unmade bed. It's a useful reminder that even a photographer as instinctive as Parr generated a lot of material that never made the final cut. The eye for the single, perfect frame (the potato, the lolly seller) comes from shooting lots and lots of pictures, then editing ruthlessly.
The exhibition itself, at the Fox Talbot Museum within Lacock Abbey, runs until 27 June 2027 and is accompanied by a book with a foreword by Susie Parr and a short film about the project. Curator Dr Andy Cochrane calls it Parr's "gift to us all," and on the evidence of these new images, that's not an exaggeration. He gave the project everything he had, right up until he couldn't give any more.
The takeaway is the same one Parr always offered, just sharper now. The work isn't about the equipment, the location or even your health. It's about showing up and looking properly, for as long as you possibly can.
Lacock by Martin Parr is open now at the Fox Talbot Museum at Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire, and runs until 27 June 2027. Visit nationaltrust.org.uk/lacock for further information.
