AT A GLANCE
- Known for
- Bright colour photographs of British seaside, leisure and shopping life, made close up and often with flash
- Worked in
- Black and white until 1982, then colour
- Camera
- A Leica M3 for the early work; a Plaubel Makina 67 with flash for The Last Resort; later a macro lens with ring flash, then digital
- Also
- Magnum member from 1994 and its president from 2013 to 2017; photobook collector and historian; founder of the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol
- Start with
- The Last Resort (Dewi Lewis, 2009)
- Links
Martin Parr (1952–2025) was a British documentary photographer and a member of Magnum Photos. His bright, close and funny colour photographs of the seaside, shopping and tourism changed British documentary photography. He published more than 100 books of his own and set up a foundation for photography in Bristol.
The story
Around 1980, Martin Parr was photographing people in the rain for a new project. Water kept getting into his Leica. So he changed it for an underwater camera and a flashgun. The flash did something new. It lit up the falling rain, which is almost invisible in a normal photo. Suddenly the weather was the subject. The pictures became his book Bad Weather.
Photography had been his plan since he was a boy. He grew up in Surrey, but in the summers he stayed with his grandfather George in Yorkshire. George was an amateur photographer, and he taught Martin to use a camera. “I knew I would be a photographer from the age of 13, 14,” Parr said.
In the 1970s, though, serious photographers in Britain worked in black and white. Colour was for snapshots and advertising. Parr began to see it differently. In 1982 he and his wife Susie moved to Wallasey, near Liverpool, and he bought a new Plaubel camera with a wide-angle lens. He used it with flash, in daylight. For three summers, from 1983 to 1985, he photographed the people of New Brighton, a run-down seaside resort nearby.
The book The Last Resort came out in 1986. In Liverpool the show was well received. When it moved to the Serpentine Gallery in London, some critics called it cruel. Parr did not agree. “People in the south-east, they don’t know what it’s like in Liverpool, because they’ve never been,” he said many years later.
In 1994 he joined Magnum Photos by just one vote. Henri Cartier-Bresson had sent him a telegram suggesting he was from another planet. Parr kept working. He photographed the middle class in The Cost of Living, and tourists around the world in Small World. In 2013 Magnum elected him president.
He was diagnosed with myeloma in 2021 and kept working. Parr died at home in Bristol on 6 December 2025, aged 73.
The flash he first used against the rain stayed with him for life. So did the habit of trying each new tool on ordinary people having a day out. “Photographing it all is a form of therapy for me,” he said in 2025. “It’s defined my life.”
The work
- 1952Born in Epsom, Surrey, on 23 May
- 1970Starts studying photography at Manchester Polytechnic
- 1975Moves to Hebden Bridge and photographs its chapel communities
- 1982Publishes Bad Weather, moves to Wallasey and turns to colour
- 1986The Last Resort is published and shown at the Serpentine Gallery
- 1987Moves to Bristol with his family
- 1994Becomes a member of Magnum Photos, by one vote
- 2017Opens the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol
- 2025Dies at home in Bristol on 6 December
Lessons
Let a problem change your tools. Rain filled his Leica, so he tried an underwater camera and flash. The flash became part of his style.
Test new ideas in one familiar place. He said he tried each new camera and technique on the beach first, to see what was possible.
Get close, and ask people not to smile. He approached people with a little flattery. Then he asked them not to smile, to show some dignity and their place in the world.
Try this: choose one place near you where people relax, like a beach, a park or a market. Go back every weekend for a summer. Use flash in daylight and get close.
Gear
Parr often explained how each new camera changed his work. The main steps are known from his own words.
Leica M3: with a 35mm lens, his camera for the early black-and-white work.
Underwater camera and flashgun: he used it for Bad Weather, because his Leica let in the rain.
Plaubel Makina 67: a medium-format 6x7 camera with a wide-angle lens. He bought it in the early 1980s and used it with flash for The Last Resort. Later he also tried a standard lens to get tighter on his subjects.
Macro lens and ring flash: from 1995 he used this pair, usually seen in medical photography, for close-ups of food, faces and clichés.
Digital camera with a 24–70mm zoom: from around 2007 he worked digitally. He said the palette became more muted.
Books
The Last Resort (Promenade Press, 1986; Dewi Lewis, 2009). The book that made his name. It shows working-class families on holiday in New Brighton, near Liverpool, photographed in strong colour with daylight flash between 1983 and 1985. When it first came out, it divided critics. Today copies of the first edition are sought after by collectors. The 2009 Dewi Lewis edition keeps the original pictures and sequence and adds a new text by Gerry Badger about the book’s impact on British photography. Start here if you want to understand why Parr matters.
Small World (Dewi Lewis, first edition 1995; revised editions 2007, 2018 and 2026). A funny and sharp look at mass tourism, made from 1987 onwards. Tourists queue, sunbathe, buy souvenirs and take photos of themselves at famous sights, from Pisa to the Acropolis. The first edition had an introduction by Simon Winchester. Later editions have a text by Geoff Dyer and new pictures. According to the publisher it has never gone out of print. Good for anyone interested in travel photography and its clichés.
Utterly Lazy and Inattentive (Particular Books, 2025). His autobiography in words and pictures, written with his friend Wendy Jones and published a few months before his death. The title comes from a school report when he was fourteen. More than 150 photographs, from his first snapshots to recent work, each with his own memories and thoughts. He also explains how he got access, worked on commissions and found his pictures. The best book for readers who want to know the man as well as the work.
The Photobook: A History, Volume I (Phaidon, 2004). Written with the critic Gerry Badger, this is the first of three volumes (the others followed in 2006 and 2014). It is a history of photography told through photobooks, the field Parr loved and collected for most of his life. A key reference for anyone who collects or makes photobooks.
In his words
“I make serious photographs disguised as entertainment.”
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Every bad picture is a step toward a good one. Martin Parr knows this better than most photographers. Interviews