We’re all still obsessed with Martin Parr

“I was a student and someone slipped me The Last Resort. If I’m really honest, I’m not sure if I loved it or hated it, but I remember being totally fascinated. It works on so many different levels, you’re never sure whether you should laugh or cry.”

Speaking over Zoom from his home in Paris, Lee Shulman – the British filmmaker, founder of archival collection The Anonymous Project, and the director of I Am Martin Parr – is relaying his introduction to Parr as a film student in the ​’90s, via the revered photographer’s seminal mid-’80s photo-series. In the upcoming doc, which is out in cinemas nationwide on 21^st February, Shulman recognises the contradictions that have shaped Parr’s reputation, identifying a sentiment no doubt familiar to others who’ve encountered his work, which spans 50 years and more than 100 photobooks.

Meeting at a photography festival in 2019 – ​“he walked out of my exhibition and I jumped on him, professing my undying love” – the pair collaborated in 2021, on a book called Déjà View, bringing together images by Parr and photographs from Shulman’s Anonymous Project. ​“We said, ​‘let’s not tell anybody which is yours and which is mine’, just like we were immature school boys,” he says, referencing his mostly Kodachrome found images, which echoed the hyperreal quality and garish palette of Parr’s work. ​“That’s kind of Martin’s ethos of life.”

In I Am Martin Parr, they take a road trip, spending a summer covering hallowed ground for the photographer. It begins in New Brighton, Merseyside, where Parr shot The Last Resort – full circle, to say the least.

Published as a photobook in 1986, the series was largely condemned when it was exhibited at the Serpentine Gallery that year, perceived by art critics to be cruel and patronising – effectively a middle class photographer sneering at working class holidaymakers. This reaction was a reflection of the London media set’s own bias, reckoned Parr, who’d previously shown the images in Liverpool to a warm reception. The pictures have since become cornerstones of British culture, widely celebrated for their considered interpretation of a reality that was, back then, rarely showcased.

This preoccupation with other people’s leisure time continued for Parr. His subsequent books include Acropolis Now, which foregrounds the Athenian tourist spot, and Life’s A Beach, featuring his pictures of the artificial Ocean Dome in Miyazaki, Japan. Then there’s Parr’s book of selfies from 2000, Autoportrait, shot in various gimmicky studios, and numerous monographs dealing with Parr’s beloved Great Britain, such as A Year in the Life of Chew Stoke Village. Published in 2022, it was originally conceived as an article for The Telegraph Magazine. Then there’s Signs of the Times, based on a ​’90s BBC show (still readily available on iPlayer) examining good and bad taste in British home interiors.

“Martin’s work is like a mirror, it reflects the best and worst of society back to [us],” suggests Louis Little, head of production at the Martin Parr Foundation. Launched in 2014, with a bricks and mortar space opening in Bristol in 2017, the foundation hosts Parr’s archive (and his vast personal collection of ephemera, like his many Saddam Hussein watches), as well as works by other photographers whose work focuses on Britain. ​“Sometimes it’s funny and sometimes it’s a bit unsettling. It both intrigues and repulses us.”

As the ​“ultimate Martin Parr fan”, Shulman’s decision to make the film, then, was based on capturing Parr as he perceives him. ​“I wanted to correct something, because people think he’s mocking and ironic – that he’s cynical about things – but I don’t see that,” he says. ​“I’ve always thought he had an incredible love for humanity: the people in his photos are the people he cares about, and he talks to everybody when he’s taking pictures, he has a real connection. He celebrates ordinary life, and he’s influenced a whole generation, doing it with humility and absolutely no ego.”

Delving into the photographer’s lesser known work, the film nods to Parr’s early black and white images, down to the very first photograph he took as a teenager. By the ​’80s, he’d pivoted solely to using colour, inspired by American photographers such as William Eggleston and Stephen Shore. His idiosyncratic work, then, was accentuated by the use of a bright flash and his preference for getting up close to his subject, whether it’s a middle class homeowner on the school run or a tray of pig-shaped cupcakes. Further on-screen contributors include fellow photographer Bruce Gilden, Sir Grayson Perry, and Parr’s wife, Susie.

“It was the coronation of the king [when we shot the film], so it couldn’t have been a better Martin Parr year,” Shulman says. The photographer has long been one of the UK’s biggest champions, using his camera to explore the absurdity of being British. In 2013, Parr was invited to be City of London’s Photographer-in-Residence, exhibiting his BTS pictures of the Lord Mayor’s Show and Swan Upping on the Thames three years later. At the same time, in his catalogue for Strange and Familiar, a group show he curated for the Barbican which showed international photographers’ interpretations of Britrain, Parr made a list of its visual markers, concluding: ​“What a shame you cannot really photograph Radio 4!”

​“One can never underestimate his clock-like precision to drink tea at three o’clock,” adds Little, corroborating his enthusiasm for clichés, both behind and in front of the camera. For Charlotte King, the foundation’s studio manager, being in Parr’s orbit means observing first-hand his care for and engagement with the wider photography community. ​“He once turned down a meeting with the Queen because he had already committed to giving a talk at a camera club in Ireland,” she recalls.

For the photographers that pass through the Martin Parr Foundation, particularly those still early in their career, Parr endures because his work still feels relevant. ​“Visually, it hasn’t gotten older – the use of colour and flash was very new back [in the ​’80s and ​’90s], and it still feels contemporary,” says French photographer Clémentine Schneidermann, who exhibited with the foundation in 2019. ​“I was [initially] struck by the originality of his language, which felt fresh and original; it was funny, real, and clever at the same time.

​“How he photographs people, fearlessly and spontaneously, is something a lot of young photographers struggle with today,” Schneidermann continues. ​“It’s incredibly hard to photograph in public spaces. But his books give you the energy and inspiration to go out and take photos.”

Accessibility and humour are perhaps the most central facets of Parr’s work. Five decades into his career, his popularity has only increased, and people are happy to see themselves reflected in his photographs. ​“His work appeals to a broad audience, not just photographers, and has become an important part of social history,” says King. ​“Britain has been slow to recognise photography as an art form, but his work and contributions to [the medium] have helped put Britain on the map in the photographic world.” Instagram, and big cultural moments like the coronation and Brexit (read: a heightened political landscape), probably don’t hurt, either.

​“He’s constant,” Shulman says, ​“and that’s the mark of any great artist. Not every photo he takes is magic – pretty much 99 per cent, he says, is terrible – but the one per cent which is great, is great. Parr has become his own adjective, he’s part of [our] language, and his photos are more relevant today than they ever were. I think in future years he’ll be even more so.”

I Am Martin Parr will hit cinemas nationwide on 21^st February.