Martin Parr

At 71 years old, Martin Parr physical status not available right now. We will update Martin Parr's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Life and career

Parr, who was born in Epsom, Surrey, aspired to be a documentary photographer from the age of 14. George Parr, an amateur photographer and fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, is cited as an early influence by his grandfather. Ellen Parr, a child of 13, 14 years old, married Susan Mitchell and they have one child, Ellen Parr (born 1986). In May 2021, Parr was diagnosed with cancer.

Parr has said of his photography:

Parr's aesthetic is close, resulting from the type of film and/or the use of a ring flash. This allows him to bring their subjects "under the microscope" in their own environment, giving them ample opportunity to explore their lives and values in ways that often involve inadvertent humour. His method, as seen in his book Signs of the Times: A Portrait of the Country's Tastes (1992), has been shown to leave viewers with ambiguous emotional reactions, leaving them unsure whether to laugh or cry.

Parr studied photography at Manchester Polytechnic from 1970 to 1972 with contemporaries Daniel Meadows and Brian Griffin. 24 Parr and Meadows collaborated on various projects, one of which was spent as roving photographers at Butlin's. They were among a new wave of documentary photographers, "a loose British grouping" that, though it never gave itself a name, has become increasingly known as "the Young British Photographers," "Independent Photographers" and the 'New British Photography."

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Parr died in 1975 in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, where he would complete his first mature work. He was active with the Albert Street Workshop, a center for artistic development with a darkroom and exhibition space. Parr spent five years photographing rural life in the area, mainly on the Methodist (and some Baptist) non-conformist chapels, a focal point for rural communities that were closing down in the early 1970s. He photographed black-and-white because of its nostalgic appeal and for being suited to his celebratory look at this cherished event. In addition, photographers who were at that time were still required to work in black-and-white were still struggling to be taken seriously, with black-and-white being synonymous with commercial and snapshot photography. In 2013, his collection The Nonconformists was widely seen at the time and was published as a book. "It's easy to forget how much observational Parr was as a black-and-white photographer," critic Sean O'Hagan wrote in The Guardian.

Parr and Susan Mitchell married in 1980, and the pair then migrated to Ireland's west coast. In Boyle, County Roscommon, he constructed a darkroom.

Bad Weather, one of Parr's first publications, was released in 1982 by Zwemmer with an Arts Council subsidy, Calderdale Photographs (1984), and A Fair Day: Photographs from the West Coast of Ireland (1984), which featured photographs from mainly northern England and Ireland in black-and-white. For Bad Weather, he used a Leica M3 with a 35 mm lens, but with a flashgun, he quickly switched to an underwater camera.

Parr and his wife moved to Wallasey, England, where they gradually switched to colour photography, inspired by US colour photographers, mainly Joel Meyerowitz, but also William Eggleston and Stephen Shore, as well as British Peter Fraser and Peter Mitchell. "I had also seen John Hinde's post cards when I worked at Butlin's in the early 1970s, and the vibrant vibrant colour of these had a huge influence on me." He photographed working-class people in nearby New Brighton during the summers of 1983, 1984, and 1985. 35–36. This work appeared in the book The Last Resort: Photographs of New Brighton (1986), and was shown in Liverpool and London.

Although John Bulmer pioneered colour documentary photography of the United Kingdom from 1965, Gerry Badger has wrote of The Last Resort: Although John Bulmer pioneered colour documentary photography of Britain, from 1965.

"He was chastised by some commentators for his examination of the working classes," Karen Wright, a columnist for the Independent, says, "but one sees Parr's unflinching gaze capturing the reality of a social class's embrace of leisure in whatever form is available."

Parr conducted a photographic collection in Manchester in 1985 to photograph people at supermarkets in Salford, Retailing in the Borough of Salford, which is now housed at the archives.

In 1987, he and his wife moved to Bristol, where they now live. He completed his next big project, on the middle class, who were then becoming more wealthy under Thatcherism during 1987 and 1988. He documented middle-class life, dinner parties, and school open days in Bristol and Bath, primarily around Bristol and Bath: 42 in the southwest of England. It was released in Bath, London, Oxford, and Paris as his upcoming book The Cost of Living (1989) was published.

Mission Photographique Transmanche's book One Day Trip (1989) included photographs taken as he accompanied people on a booze cruise to France.

Parr travelled around the world between 1987 and 1994 to produce his next big series, a critique of mass tourism, which was released as Small World in 1995. In 2007, a new version with additional photographs was released. It was on display in London, Paris, Edinburgh, and Palma, Spain, from 1995 to 1996, and has been seen in numerous locations since.

He worked as a visiting professor of photography at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki from 1990 to 1992.

The series Common Sense of global consumerism was produced between 1995 and 1999 by Parr. Common Sense was an exhibition of 350 prints and a book that was published in 1999 with 158 photos. The exhibition was first seen in 1999 and was seen in forty-one venues in seventeen countries simultaneously. The photographs depict the minutiae of consumer culture and are intended to show how people entertain themselves. The photographs were shot on a 35 mm ultra-saturated film for its vibrant, heightened colors.

In 1988, Parr became a member of Magnum Photos as an associate member. The 1994 vote on his enrolment as a full member was divisive, with Philip Jones Griffiths circulating a petition to other members not to admit him. Parr received the required two-thirds majority by a single vote. Magnum's members helped him with editorial photography and editorial fashion photography for Paul Smith, Louis Vuitton, Galerie du jour Agnès B. and Madame Figaro.

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Parr was elected president of Magnum Photos International in 2014, a post he held for 3.5 years before 2017.

Parr is a photographer and critic of photobooks. The Photobook: A History (in three volumes) by Gerry Badger, a photographer, includes more than 1,000 examples of photo books from the 19th century to the present day. The first two volumes took eight years to complete. Many Moriyama books loaned from Parr were on display in vitrines at Tate Modern's retrospective exhibition in London.

Parr also collects postcards, photographs, and other aspects of vernacular and popular culture, such as wallpaper, Saddam Hussein's watches, and prostitute advertising cards from phoneboxes (items with a photograph). Here's another example: items from his collections have been used as the basis for books and exhibitions. Parr has collected and distributed the garish postcards created by John Hinde and his crew of photographers in the 1950s and 1970s.

Parr was guest artistic director of the 2004 Rencontres d'Arles festival of photography, guest curator of the New Typologies exhibition at the 2008 New York Photo Festival, and guest curator of the Brighton Photo Biennial in 2010, which he referred to as New Documents. "Back in 2004, Sean O'Hagan, a critic in The Guardian, was invited by the organisers of the annual Rencontres D'Arles to be guest curator." The Arles festival in this year, both in scope and ambition, is still the gold standard by which all subsequent Rencontres have been judged."

Parr was the artistic director of the newly established Bristol Photo Festival, which is set to open in 2021. However, he resigned in July 2020 due to his affiliation with Gian Butturini's reissued photobook London, despite a campaign launched by an anthropology student at University College London who called a pair of photographs in it racist.

Parr has been active in the production of television, documentary, and other film projects.

Parr worked with Nick Barker from 1990 to 1992, photographing Barker's film Signs of the Times.

Parr began constructing his own television documentaries with Mosaic Film in 1997.

Parr was the subject of and appeared in the Imagine BBC One TV series episode The World According to Parr, directed and produced by Rebecca Frayn and executive produced by Alan Yentob in 2003.

On the film It's Nice Up North (2006) with comedian Graham Fellows (as his character John Shuttleworth). The film is a comedic documentary shot in Shetland over the course of several years.

Parr appeared in BBC Four's The Genius of Photography, a six-part documentary series debating photography's history, in 2007. He appeared on Channel 4's Picture This in 2008.

Parr created "Turkey and Tinsel," a 60-minute deadpan and often amusing observational video documentary about faux Christmas in small town England, in 2014.

Parr was a visiting lecturer at West Surrey College of Art & Design (now University of the Creative Arts) in Farnham, Surrey. He was appointed photographer of photography at the University of Wales, Newport, in 2004. He was appointed professor of photography at Ulster University in Belfast in 2013.

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Honours and awards

• 2004: Professor of photography, University of Wales, Newport.
• 2005: Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society (FRPS), Royal Photographic Society, Bath, UK.
• 2006: Honorary Masters Degree, University for the Creative Arts
• 2006: Dr. Erich Salomon Award, Germany
• 2008: Centenary Medal, Royal Photographic Society, Bath, UK.
• 2008: Doctor of Arts, honorary degree, Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), in recognition for his ongoing contribution to photography and to the MMU School of Art.
• 2008: Lifetime Achievement Award, PHotoEspaña.
• 2008: International Award from the Photographic Society of Japan.
• 2014: Exceptional Achievement in Photography, Amateur Photographer, London.
• 2014: Lucie Award, Achievement in Documentary Photography, Lucie Foundation.
• 2016: Recognition for Significant Contribution in the Field of Visual Arts, Royal Academy of Arts, London.
• 2017: Outstanding Contribution to Photography prize, World Photography Organisation.