Parr sadly passed away on December 6, 2025, aged 73. Back in 2016, Professional Photography magazine sat down with prolific Parr to discuss his photo books, wedding photography, and his “laboratory", the beach.
“You have to laugh. People are funny, aren’t they?” Martin Parr has a keen eye for quirky human behaviour. Where you or I might dismiss an everyday scene of supermarket shoppers, beachgoers or British event revellers, Parr finds subjects for his anthropological-like work, which amuses its appreciators as much as it provides social commentary.
“I’m in the business of creating entertainment that has a serious message, if you want to read it,” says the Magnum president, sitting in his Bristol kitchen, cup of tea in hand. “My first priority is to make an entertaining picture, whether that’s bright colors, people, shapes or the design within it.” But each image is also playing a role within a larger body of work – often 40 or 50 images in expanse – that examines people at work, and at leisure, whether that be on holiday, eating or spending.
The comic value of his work has given him a universal appeal, ensuring an exceptionally broad audience for his hundred-plus photo books and tens of international exhibitions. “I shift a lot of books and sell a lot of shows, which I’m very grateful for,” he agrees. “I’ve been around forever – I’m an establishment old fart.”
Yet his work has by no means grown stale. He is best known for his documentary work, including his 1980s ‘The Last Resort’, showing holidaymakers determinedly enjoying themselves at a blustery, litter-strewn, concrete-heavy Merseyside seaside resort. But Parr has stayed fresh with regular forays into fashion photography, exhibition curation, book editing, filming TV series, films, lecturing, and even photographing weddings. It’s this kind of constant hustle that garnered fellow Magnum member Alec Soth’s reference to Parr as the Jay-Z of documentary photography.
Martin Parr CBE (1952-2025) was a British documentary photographer whose career spanned more than five decades. Sometimes controversial, the perspectives of his images can be exaggerated and the colors garish, his work covers concepts such as leisure, consumption, and communication, and examines national characteristics as well as international phenomena to help us understand cultural peculiarities. The Martin Parr Foundation was opened in Bristol, UK, in 2014, to house Martin’s archives and support emerging, established, and overlooked photographers.
Have things changed a lot since you started out?
“Now I get invited a lot to talk at amateur clubs. They’re recognizing what I do, inviting me in – it wouldn’t have happened 10 or 20 years ago. I was in Hepton Bridge Camera Club in the 70s, and that was quite a laugh because I either came top or bottom!”
It’s the sheer volume of work that strikes us…
“Yes, I’m overwhelmed with work. First, self-initiated and secondly, that I get given.”
But you’re still making time for personal projects?
“Absolutely. I’ve just booked many things for this year: Henley, Cheltenham Gold Cup, Scarborough… the work I just did in India was purely for myself. I give that a lot of priority and take it very seriously. I will book the trip – literally a flight or a hotel – and then I have to go.”
Revisiting events, how do you stay fresh?
“The danger is that as you get older, it’s too easy to rely on the language you’ve used before, so you’ve got to try and reinvent yourself. That’s why I’m doing all of these other things, like editing and curating… to try and keep myself on my toes.”
You’ve achieved so much. What are you most proud of?
“First off, building this big archive of work about Britain and publishing the 100 or so books that I’ve done. And I think some of the research I’ve done on photo books has been valuable. To try and build that up and to make the photo book a more studied and serious art form.”
But you can publish yourself, so does it really carry any weight?
“You can indeed publish yourself, but if you get known, you want to get published by an established publisher who can ‘plug it into the system’. But many great books have been self-published. Getting a print on demand book done gives people a chance to see how their work is functioning in a book. It’s an unforgiving medium – it either works or it doesn’t.”
I’ve heard you have an expansive collection…
“I have 12,000 photo books in my collection.”
So what do you think makes a great photo book?
“Well, you’ve got to have very good pictures to start off with! Most people publish books too early, or they’re not strong enough photographs. You can smell how much effort’s gone into a body of work within a minute of looking at it. The trouble with photography is that it’s just so easy to make a book of 50 pictures. You could knock it out in a morning, and it would look good on one level, but it wouldn’t be saying anything. Good photography has to have a statement, a vision. I can’t tell you how rare a great new body of work that hasn’t been published is. You’d think it’d be common.”
When you travel, are you straying from your ‘wealthy West’ interests?
“That’s my priority, but that wealth is spreading in places like China and India, and that interests me a lot. I did two weddings this week in India, in Mumbai – I gatecrashed them. I have done wedding photographs... I quite enjoy it.”
I wouldn’t have had you pegged as a wedding photographer. You don’t think it’s beneath you?
“No, no, far from it. The best ones are very well paid, and they have a very good opportunity to capture a great day. And if people ask me, I will do it.”
Now you’re going to be inundated.
“Yes! But I’ll be expensive. It’s a great opportunity; I love photographing weddings. There’s nothing much I don’t like doing.”
What do you like about weddings?
“It’s full of cliches… I can never believe that a wedding photographer would go before the party starts. You know, once they’ve done their set shots; the family, the meal, the speeches, the party’s about to start, and then they go! Just when it’s getting interesting. That to me is unbelievable... I suppose some might stay to the end, but that doesn’t seem to me to be the thing. If you want to do a good job, that’s when you’re going to get the really interesting photographs.”
But it’s a bride’s prerogative to look pretty. Does it ever concern you that people might be embarrassed about how they look in your photographs?
“I’m only showing them as they are. So if there’s embarrassment, it’s their fault, not mine.”
Do you ever experiment with your gear? You’re famous for using a ring-flash and macro lens...
“I’m using the telephoto lens at the moment to see what can be done with that. So I’m exploring different ways of looking, using the beach as a sort of laboratory.”
Being on the beach you have to be careful… you can be perceived as a sexual deviant, these days.
“That works out very well with doing the telephoto, but I’ve just been in India on the beach and I didn’t use a telephoto at all, just a standard 24-70mm. It’s not an issue there. If you photograph for a long time, you get very good at reading body language. I often do not look at the people I photograph, especially afterwards. You just have to be aware of what’s going on, and be aware of when you need to ask and when you need to hold back. One in every 50 has an allergic reaction to being photographed – you can spot them.”
You’ve said that if you take 10 good photos, it would be a good year. Has that figure changed?
“No, it’s pretty constant. You have to take a lot of bad pictures to get a good one. I take many, many more bad pictures than most of your readers put together! You know when you’re on to something, but you can always be surprised. You can never predict when a good photograph is going to show. If I knew how to take a good photo I would just stop. I probably take more now because I delete quite a bit in the camera, even.”
You’re quite ruthless with your edit?
“You have to be. It has to function when I’m making an edit for a book. It’s very quick – the hard work is making the pictures. It’s a piece of piss, editing. It’s so clear what’s good and what’s bad.”
You’ve started an Instagram account?
“I do social media. I have a Facebook page, but it’s run by a woman who lives in Geneva. I’m on Instagram but I don’t load a single picture. Our current intern, one of the jobs they do is to load my Instagram page. I’ve made a file of pictures I want them to use.”
Would you say you have a good head for business?
“You could argue I’m a good businessman, because I earn a decent living, but it’s all been led by wanting to do the pictures. When I left college I had no desire to do any commercial or advertising work. It’s something that happened… by being part of Magnum, by having that work offered to me, by asking for a very high day rate. When you’re prostituting yourself like that then only way to compensate is to throw a lot of money at you, otherwise people are not going to do it – you’re surrendering the one thing that is crucial to you: an agenda. You’re using your style but you’re losing your agenda. I hardly know the brand that I’m advertising because it’s of no interest to me. Is a Gucci dress any better than a LV one? Who knows, or cares.”
But you still do it?
“Of course. Remember, the great thing about commercial work is that it’s generally anonymous. When you see an ad, it doesn’t say ‘photographed by’.”
Does the fact it’s easier to take photographs means it’s harder for the up-and-coming professionals now?
“It’s just as difficult to take a good one.”
Why do you say you shoot what “needs to be seen”?
“It’s important to record these things. A supermarket is just as important as other things in contemporary life. It’s just that people wouldn’t think that a supermarket is as worthy a subject. But in years to come, it will have more value. I have a responsibility as a documentary photographer. We’re living in a changing world – it’s very exciting. And you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
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