Martin Parr, photographer of the eccentricities of British life, died in his home in Bristol on 6 December at age 73, his foundation announced.
Born in Surrey in 1952, Martin Parr started taking pictures as a child. He attended Manchester Polytechnic from 1970 to 1973 before moving to West Yorkshire where he met his wife, Susan Mitchell. Following two years in Ireland, the couple moved to Wallasey in Merseyside. During this period, Parr started taking colour photographs and produced one of his most well-known series, The Last Resort (1983–86) documenting beachgoers in New Brighton. The highly saturated photographs, depicting crowded ice cream shops, sunbathers lounging by construction vehicles and trash-filled beaches received mixed reviews, with some criticising Parr’s derisive portrayal of working-class Britain and others praising his unflinching realism. The ambivalence surrounding the interpretation of his work followed him throughout his career, as he went on to capture Thatcher-era middle-class society events (The Cost of Living, 1986–88), the global tourism industry (Small World, 1987–1994) and the excesses of consumerism (Common Sense, 1995–1999).
In 1994, Parr joined the photography collective Magnum and became its president from 2014 to 2017. In 2014, he founded the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol, which houses his own photography archive alongside a collection and temporary exhibitions of British and Irish photography.
In September this year, Parr published his first memoir Utterly Lazy and Inattentive (titled after a comment received from a school teacher), adding to an opus of over 100 photobooks published throughout his career. In 2024, he was the subject of a documentary I Am Martin Parr by Lee Shulman.
Earlier this year, Parr told Esquire that he had been diagnosed with myeloma, an incurable blood cancer. ‘I’ve been very lucky’, he said in the same interview. ‘I need a rollator to go walking but I can still shoot pictures.’ Speaking about his work, he added: ‘I try to make interesting pictures with meaning behind them, and humour just naturally comes into it. The world is funny, and you have to laugh at the outrageous things that people do.’
Martin Parr’s work will be the subject of a solo exhibition, Global Warning, 30 January through 24 May, at the Jeu de Paume, Paris.
