Remembering Martin Parr, astute documenter of the human condition

Martin Parr, the photographer whose unique perspective articulated British culture, has died aged 73.

Parr is remembered as a giant of photography and of the photobook, and as kind, funny and straight talking. His photographs. which rethought the medium, are instantly recognisable for their timing, their wit and their striking use of colour, capturing moments of leisure pursuits all over the world. Parr has spent three summers photographing Brighton’s beaches, and the result was an almost anarchic series of images of working-class English leisure as it had never really been seen. Acres of burnt skin, overflowing bins and melting ice creams run alongside iconic motifs of seaside towns, tapping into a real time nostalgia. They captured a moment, elevating a part of English identity that had never been documented in this way.

Success struck when his book The Last Resort was published in 1986. He went on to shoot the middle and upper classes with an equally uncompromising eye, highlighting their privilege at the end of the Eighties. During a time when many living in England were experiencing extreme financial hardship, he published the acute The Cost of Living (1988).

With this sharp social commentary came stunning image making: his photographs, while they sometimes explore the grotesque, always contain a certain beauty.

'How you define what a good picture is impossible to actually say - if I knew I'd write it down and retire,' Parr said, speaking to Wallpaper* in 2024. 'But you know that's the magic of photography, you never quite know when a good picture is going to show up, so that's exciting.'

He said he specialised in people dancing, and loved capturing people at their least self-conscious, lost in the heady atmosphere of a pub, a party or at the races. He did this throughout his career, from the pubs of Manchester when he was studying photography in the early Seventies, through to Moscow in the early Nineties, to bars in Cuba decades later in the early 2000s.

He joined the legendary Magnum agency in 1994 (which caused a stir among the likes of Henri Cartier Bresson) and continued to travel the world taking photographs. He captured the ridiculous and the sublime, shooting tourists at hotspots like the tower of Pisa and Kyoto’s Golden Temple in Small World (1994-2024). Here he highlighted unsustainable levels of tourism at sites that have become iconic, almost beyond their capacity. Through a carnival of selfie sticks and people leaning into space, his point was clearly made.

The Martin Parr Foundation and Magnum Photos released a statement: 'It is with great sadness that we announce that Martin Parr died yesterday [Saturday 6 December] at home in Bristol. He is survived by his wife Susie, his daughter Ellen, his sister Vivien and his grandson George. The family asks for privacy at this time. The Martin Parr Foundation and Magnum Photos will work together to preserve and share Martin’s legacy. More information on this will follow in due course. Martin will be greatly missed.'

Parr set up the Martin Parr Foundation in 2014 to support emerging and established photographers, which has since grown into Paintworks, a gallery, library, studio and archive centre with a photography collection in 2017.

Parr was truly beloved by those who worked with him, and tributes from all corners of the photography word have poured in, speaking to not only his seismic impact on the medium, but to also his character.