The street photography of Martin Parr was always divisive. In the mid-1980s, many residents of New Brighton, a seaside resort on the Wirral in Merseyside, England, believed his work was ridiculing them. But time, it seems, heals all wounds. Now, less than a year on from his death, the town is fundraising to put a giant tribute to him on its seafront.
New Brighton Creative Futures, a community arts group, has announced plans for a large-scale mural honoring Parr and The Last Resort, the iconic color photo series he shot in the town between 1983 and 1985.
The project is being developed with the Martin Parr Foundation, and the group is asking local people to donate, sponsor and even come forward if they think they might be one of the faces in the original photographs. It's a neat conclusion to a 40-year story.
From backlash to acceptance
It's worth remembering just how much that original body of work upset some people. Martin Parr didn't set out to show New Brighton in its best light. Instead, he focused his lens on its litter-strewn beaches, its overflowing bins and its crowded, sunburnt families; all shot in the saturated colour that was looked down on in serious documentary circles at the time.
Locals and critics alike accused Parr of being a class tourist, of making a declining resort look worse than it was, of being voyeuristic with people who hadn't signed up to be part of anyone's art project. I know some who still hold these thoughts to this day, although they're less outspoken than they once were.
Parr himself was aware of the backlash, but it didn't deter him in the slightest. "I realised pretty early on that controversy didn't do you any harm," he once told Magnum. "And now of course it's seemed to have all settled, and people are much more appreciative of that body of work than they were in the 80s."
That settling took decades, and it happened not in an instant, but more through the pictures simply outlasting the argument. The photographs that once looked like an insult now read, to most eyes, as an affectionate and honest record of how the British enjoy summer, exactly because Parr refused to prettify it.
New Brighton's Victoria Quarter has spent the past eight years building itself into one of the country's densest clusters of large-scale murals, and this tribute will join that open-air gallery rather than stand alone.
What the finished piece will add to that collage remains to be seen. But the mere fact of its existence says something Parr would probably have appreciated: the town that once resented being looked at so closely has made its peace with Parr.
