I Am Martin Parr (2024) Movie Script
1
Martin's very unassuming.
Brilliantly ordinary.
One of the most iconic
British photographers of all time.
It's shocking.
People love it or they hate it.
But you always have
a reaction to it.
It's exciting, immediate.
He's just shooting,
shooting, shooting.
It's this choreography of life that
he brings together in a single moment.
There are so many
different levels to his work
than something just beautiful.
It's a trademark.
He did what Charlie Chaplin
was doing in silent movies.
Comedy and tragedy.
No one did it in photography.
You do it his way
or it's the highway.
He's changed the way we look.
I guess getting close
is part of my approach.
And sometimes I pull back.
It just depends on the situation.
There aren't really those rules,
but generally speaking
I'm in the midst of things.
It's the only way to survive,
to sort of put together components
in some kind of interesting form.
Extraordinarily,
lots of people don't notice him.
He's so tall,
he usually has a big camera
and he just hangs around in places.
And people sort of just
don't seem to notice him.
He waits for things to appear.
I think I took my first photo
of my father on a frozen stream
in the very cold winter of 1963.
I wanted to record this idea
of him standing on the ice.
A few years later, I went to Yorkshire
and met my grandfather
who was a very keen photographer.
We went out shooting,
processed film, made prints.
The excitement I felt seeing
the pictures come out in the dev
was fantastic.
People believe\i
the more interesting birds\i
are found only in remote places.\i
Yet, with a little encouragement,\i
many birds will come\i
to our yards\i
and gardens.\i
My parents are very keen
bird watchers.
My father was obsessed
and he passed it on to my mother.
I got my obsessive genes from him.
Our trips out would be to places
like Peckham Harbour
to look for waders.
He would put up nets
and birds would fly in.
He'd ring them
and then collect the data.
Of course, it was all about
migratory habits of birds.
By the age of 13 or 14,
I wanted to be a photographer.
Nothing else was gonna happen.
Everybody was out
photographing the English.
But Martin was one of the best ones,
even at that point
of his photographic career.
He was good. You could tell
the difference, at least I can,
when someone has it
and when someone...
is doing the same kind of work
but it's not there, it's not as good.
Martin was one that I would
have crossed off on the list
saying,
look for this one, he's good.
I personally have a massive passion
for the black and white work.
In there, the essence is that
removed nature of looking at people
but still really embedded
to what he sees
and to the visual of the person.
It's all there in the picture.
"I'm looking at you, I'm embedded
in what you're thinking
but I'm staying back
in the distance."
That's the essence of what makes
a Martin Parr picture a picture.
It was more reflective,
more serious,
sort of social documentary,
photographing the chapel communities
and the farming communities.
At that point, he was very...
It was black and white
sort of humanist photography.
In the beginning, he was
very much socially engaged.
We can see by his work
that he is not
a cynical person at all.
His interest
for the social aspects
can be seen more clearly
in his black and white photos.
In his black and white work,
there is a series of abandoned
Morris Minor cars in Ireland.
Following his obsession
with these abandoned cars,
we realise that
they're not just cars,
but cars that were
economically accessible
to the Irish and English
working class for many years.
And with the decline
of the working class in the 70's,
they were left abandoned.
He is already questioning
"what should I photograph and why?"
And "where do I go from here?"
For me,
the black and white work
is the starting point of his legacy.
When you look at the stories
in the black and white images,
if you put them into colour,
they almost would be
like the colour images now.
But it's interesting seeing
his work in black and white
because it completely takes away
what a lot of people know Martin for,
but you can really see that humour
or those excentricities.
It takes a certain kind
of 21-year-old
to be able to go into those spaces,
especially in the 70s and the 80s.
I went to Manchester Polytechnic
and there I met lots of artist friends
and we decided it would be
quite nice to try and move
to a small town in Yorkshire.
What I found most intriguing
was the nonconformist chapels
of which there were many in the area.
I went round to them all
and decided to hone in
on Crimsworth Dean
methodist chapel.
The big event is the anniversary,
the birthday of the chapel.
Then they have two services
and in between time, they serve
a chapel tea. That's something
I photographed extensively.
That to me
was the best event of the year.
I guess I was celebrating the sense
of community Hebden Bridge had.
- I'll show you upstairs.
- Okay.
What's the difference
between baptist and methodist?
You've got me there.
Apart from the fact that
one's baptist and one's methodist.
Good answer!
I remember, this picture
was up in the workshop
in Hebden Bridge.
We used to give people pictures.
Someone wanted to buy a copy,
"but only the bottom half because
I don't know the people on top".
So I had half a photograph extra.
I gave him the whole thing of course.
I look back to the black and white
work with great affection.
I've photographed in black and white
for nearly fifteen years.
It was a great part
of the learning curve.
In the 70s, a serious photographer
had to work in black and white.
Colour was the domain of commercial,
snapshot photography.
It is only in the late 60s
that colour photography
began being taken seriously.
If you look at
his black and white work
after you are solid
in knowing his colour work,
you come to appreciate
not only his early work better,
but also the value
of black and white altogether.
Because it was traditional,
but it's the black and white
that allows
that Martin Parr genius to surface.
And when it surfaces
through black and white,
you get another kick, because
it's not sometning that you expect.
The image of the guy
standing on a ladder
with one foot in the void
is perfect.
He was really, really young,
but he already had a vision,
he already knew what to do.
Stop smiling. Serious portrait.
And now, here's Ozzie.\i
I'd like to show you\i
a new idea in picture taking.\i
A fine 35 millimeter camera\i
by Kodak,\i
called the Automatic 35.\i
It lets you take beautiful colour\i
slides with the right exposure\i
time after time, automatically.\i
Just as your own eyes\i
adjust to changing light,\i
the Kodak Automatic 35 camera\i
with its electric eye meter\i
measures the light\i
and adjusts itself.\i
I'd moved to Ireland in the 80s
for a couple of years.
When I came back,
I decided to go to colour.
Just down the road
was New Brighton.
There was this new camera
called a Plaubel,
it's a 6x7 camera, very easy to use.
I basically changed to colour
and never looked back.
I like seaside resorts because
I wasn't taken to them as a kid.
I've used the beach
as my experimental lab.
When I moved to colour,
it was more of a critique of society.
You're looking for the individual
pictures, but ultimately
you're trying to create a narrative
about what's going on there.
That to me is very much documentary.
It's very difficult
to create a photographic icon.
You can't predict
how and when they'll happen.
They just do happen sometimes.
When you see something
that's very exciting,
very moving, that's the time
when you might get
one of these great pictures.
You're constantly searching for them
and they remain elusive.
But that's what keeps me
being a photographer.
If I only had to go out
and do it automatically,
why would I be interested
in doing it?
That's the challenge.
There's no such thing
as a perfect picture.
Everyday you hope to get one,
but most of the time you don't.
But you have to believe
every morning, before you go out,
that this could be the day
when something happens.
Your job in the first instance
is to record what you see.
You feel the excitement
of what's going on
and very rarely do you get
that same excitement
translated into the image.
That's the skill,
and that's difficult.
In the early 80's, Martin Parr
produces his first colour work.
Colour was the domain of fashion,
it had just arrived
in documentary,
but not in fine art photography.
So Martin's work
was a huge turning point.
He said: "I am
a middle class photographer,
I want to record society
as it is."
When I saw those first pictures
from The Last Resort,\i
it just... For me,
it was incredibly real.
It was how he shot the world
and not how you wanted
the world to be.
That's a really important point.
He was shooting
and he just captured that world.
And I understood it completely.
There had been some jibes about how
he was maybe being condescending
to the working class,
but I didn't see that at all.
Coming from a working class
background, I think
he was just putting the camera
in front of people and captured it.
The choice of the title
"The Last Resort" is a real statement.
It's not just photographs
of holiday makers.
It marks the end
of the working class
in the Thatcher years.
The architecture of his images
is very complex,
yet he managed to deliver
a very clear, pure statement.
Concise,
without a word more,
without an image less,
without one colour more,
without one element less.
- Can we do a picture of them all?
- Yes.
Great. Fantastic.
You make them or you buy them?
Buy them.
Amazing.
You just stand here.
That's great.
Can I do one of you
being serious as well?
Not miserable, just serious.
Just normal. Normal face, yeah?
OK, that's great.
Brilliant, thank you.
I've enjoyed photographing people
and meeting them.
They're crazy, unpredictable,
always interesting.
I like to try and understand
what people are like
just by looking at them.
Clothes, attitude, how they speak.
This is all very entertaining
and very interesting for me.
My main aim is to try
and create an archive
about the time I've lived in Britain.
That in a sense will be my legacy.
Martin Parr became a member\i
of Magnum en 1988.\i
I accompanied him\i
while he was taking photographs\i
for his exhibition and book\i
"Common Sense".\i
It took me a long time
to become a member of Magnum.
Many Magnum photographers
didn't want me to join,
so I had to go through some meetings
where I was rejected.
It's always been a close thing
that I would get enough votes
to become a member.
But I knew it was
the right thing to join
in order to get strong distribution
of the work.
I'm a populist at heart
and I thought that Magnum
offered the best means
of distribution for my pictures.
The objections
to me being a member
was that I was too cynical
and not fitting
into the tradition of humanism
that Magnum's famous for.
Is that purple?
- Yeah, that's purple.
- Right.
When he applied
to the Magnum agency,
half of the Magnum
photographers said:
"If he becomes a member,
we are out!"
And the other half said:
"If he doesn't join, we're has-beens
and we are leaving!"
It's that snobbery.
I think we're akin in that
we both battled to a certain extent
against snobbery
within the culture business.
Which is all down to class
and overintellectualization.
Photography suffers
terribly from academe,
that sort of philosophical waffle.
The view that we look at his work
was regarded at the time,
and Cartier-Bresson found it,
he was an alien...
We've not quite caught up
to how he's taking photographs today.
He's ahead of his time.
Don't be shy!
That's it, got it.
That's brilliant!
With paint as well.
Thanks a lot. Bye.
Snazzy.
Martin shows people as they are.
He just captures the world as it is.
I think people tend to project
their own interpretation and feelings
on those images.
When you see him photograph,
there's no way that you could
call him cruel or anything like that.
Because he's totally involved
in who he is photographing
and who he's trying to capture.
He's really good at saying, like:
"I like your shirt", "I love your hat"
and things like that.
And that really does
make people feel at ease
and it allows him to photograph
people in the way he does.
I like your bag.
Oh no, I want a photograph now!
- Do you?
- Yes.
- I made them myself.
- Did you?
In the beginning of his career,
people said:
"You can't photograph
people like this,
you can't do colour,
you can't use a flash..."
It must have motivated him
to go against the status quo,
and today he doesn't care
about the rules and conventions
of photography.
There's some politics in my work,
but I'm not telling people what it is.
They can discover it
if they want to.
My main project
is the leisure pursuits
of the Western world
within all classes.
Working class
like New Brighton\i
and middle class
like The Cost of Living.\i
I'm looking at people's leisure time,
that's my main subject.
I'm never in a situation
where I wouldn't point a camera
because I don't go to wars,
I don't go and see the world's huge
droughts that we're experiencing.
It's unlikely there would be a place
where I wouldn't take a picture.
I mean, if I a saw a car crash
and someone was dead, I wouldn't.
I love Britain, of course.
We all love the country we come from.
Part of my role is,
if you like, to define
my relationship to being British
and being here.
In a sense I'm trying to show
the yin and yang of British society
and to show it as I find it
as opposed to some idea
of it being romantic or good or bad,
to try to show both things.
One of the good things is that
we have a good sense of humour.
All I'm doing is seeing the things
that I think are interesting,
sometimes funny. People are funny.
So how can the work not be funny
at some point in their production?
But I don't think of myself
as a humorous photographer.
Naturally, life is strange
and life is funny.
Hi there.
May I do a quick portrait?
Brilliant. Thank you very much.
You look great.
Martin's photographs are defined
by their humour and their humanity.
And he's got
a great sense of the absurd.
Humour is so important and underrated.
Culture is biased
againt humour, and yet humour
is what keeps it in check.
There's so much of what I call
performative seriousness in art,
where people think
that misery is somehow
more important in art
than humour.
Humour is what keeps pomposity
and sort of...
unchecked belief.
This man's got a very good
sense of humour,
a needle-sharp eye
for the material culture of our times.
He would laser beam
on the particular food,
the particular garment or make-up.
And that tells a story
about where we are now.
Being able to be funny
is not a cheap gift.
And for him especially,
he's got to find real things
that are funny.
His eyes have got to make it funny.
Why two people enjoying a picnic
outside their car next to a road?
It's funny, isn't it?
It's sort of funny.
But also, you love the subjects too.
A lot of humour is seen as cruel
but I never think
Martin's photographs are cruel.
I just think they're celebrating
eccentricity in all its forms.
Normally, when people
want to capture Britain, it's like
a bridge in London
and the Houses of Parliament behind.
They want certain images
that are quite clichd
that tell the story
'this is Britain'.
But Martin doesn't do that,
he finds some little
sort of garden plates.
I don't think anyone had ever
photographed like that before.
Anywhere he would find
something interesting to photograph.
Of course the signature
of a brilliant photographer is that
wherever he is, he'll find
something interesting.
You can see the responsibility
on my shoulders, right?
Thank you. I've abdicated the throne!
- King Charles!
- Charles!
King Martin the first, please.
- Martin!
- King Martin!
I think it's just a reflection
of society in the UK.
That's what it's
quintessentially about.
You feel the same experience, I think.
There's definitely a place for humour,
particularly when it comes to
the subjects he was photographing
and some of the ideas
about British class.
Britain, even to this day,
is still going on about class
and there are still
kind of class divisions, in its way.
We have a class system
par excellence, \ihere in this country.
And whether we know it or not,
the middle classes are finely attuned
to the gradations of status
within material culture.
Still to this day,
I open the Times newspaper
and there's the supplement
and it's always got
a woman with swooshy hair.
Which is that kind of generic
West London posh.
Always that woman on the front.
Of course, there's that great
Martin Parr photograph
taken at a conservative party event.
And there's a woman
swooshing her hair in just that way.
And I've always associated that...
It's implanted in me.
There's something
about that sort of wholesome,
sort of blandness of the posh.
Brilliant, thank you.
We are gathered
to offer worship and praise
to our mighty God,
to celebrate the life of our nations,
to pray for Charles, our king.
To recognize and to give thanks
for his life of service
to this nation, the realms
and the Commonwealth.
Thank you very much.
Brilliant, thank you.
- Not smiling?
- Hold the flag up.
Yeah, that's good
I'm gonna do a vertical.
- Would you like some glitter?
- Yeah, down here.
- But do it on this side.
- Which is your best side?
Oh, great! Right.
Should we have a picture?
We should have a picture together.
- Who's taking it?
- I don't know. I'm not going to.
I don't think my pictures
are that nasty or harsh.
There's always an element of that,
but what I'm trying to do
is to reflect what I find
in a very subjective way,
and turn it into photographs.
Martin is unique,
he is very free-minded.
He doesn't care about dress sense.
He wears different socks,
an old pair of sandals,
an old jumper...
He's kind of generically ordinary.
And I think that's his camo.
A nature photographer is in camo
so as to not disturb the animals.
That what he is, so he has
to be internationally bland.
The thing is, he's starting to look
anachronistic a little bit
because he's older now.
His idea of bland
is probably out of date.
Yeah, his job
is to blend into the background
and sidle up to things and go...
Flying at more\i
than 300 miles an hour,\i
the Viscount brings Gibraltar\i
within 4 hours\i
of London,\i
and the families to the holiday\i
they've long dreamed about.\i
He became kind of well known with
New Brighton\i and The Last Resort.\i
And then he was off
flying around the world,
going to festivals
and travelling to take photos.
Martin can't swim
but he does love the seaside
and he loves sort of tourist resorts
and things like that.
So we've compromised:
we go to places where I can swim
and he can take photographs.
That works incredibly well.
I'm still excited by seeing
this crazy world that we live in.
Every place I go to,
there is something interesting
that immediately makes me
want to photograph it.
Sometimes people judge
Martin's photos on face value.
As the years went by,
his focus turned to the rise
of global tourism,
which was then ignored.
He was probably the first
to deal with this subject.
He started with the UK
and moved on
to the whole western world.
I remember photographing
on the ferries from France to the UK
when people buy duty free.
And you get these crazy scenes
of people grabbing beer. It's nuts.
I'm happy with those situations
where consumerism goes out of control.
Among other things, I'm trying
to capture how things have changed
with the rise of the hypermarket,
the supermarket.
If you buy a package,
there's always a picture of the food.
But when you open it up,
it looks completely different.
That, I think, shows the basic lie
that we're all being told.
You could argue
that our greed
for all the consumables
is gonna be partly responsible
for global climate warming,
this sort of stuff.
I'm aware of things like this,
and I'm glad my photographs
introduce these topics,
albeit very subtly.
The appearance of food\i
can make the difference\i
to one's appetite.\i
Similarly, its presentation\i
shouldn't be overlooked.\i
You see? Nothing to it.\i
You never know what you can do\i
until you try. Famous last words.\i
Interestingly, junk food
makes better pictures.
I photograph posh food as well,
but it looks like something
out of a magazine.
These days of course,
everyone's photographing food.
In posh restaurants, people
are photographing every course.
At least I was ahead
of that movement.
I can retire from food photography
knowing that the general public
have taken it on.
This is the point about Martin Parr.
He doesn't photograph food
because of the food itself.
He photographs food
as a commentary
on consumerism,
on fast-food,
on tastes,
on the state of healthy living.
It's a crude commentary,
which I think no one really does.
There's something majestic
about seeing
what we normally think of
as very ugly
in a kind of...
I wouldn't say romanticized
but beautiful way.
Beautiful or ugly?
It looks pretty,
but when you get closer it's...
rather revolting.
Maybe he gets
closer than you should
or would.
That's what he wants to show,
that is the message.
"This is just like you,
"this is like us,
this is life as it is
"and not how you want it to be."
The reality of what it is,
that kind of disconnect
between the mythology
and the reality.
He's getting closer
and closer to what
the need of the subject is,
and then exploiting it completely.
Nice wasp
on some cheap strawberry jam.
You can see it's cheap.
It's got no fruits in it.
Here's one from the States,
on the beach.
These are images
from the Common Sense \iproject
which happened in 1999,
where all the close ups I'd taken
in the UK and in Europe
came together into this project.
A phone card in the ashtray.
The ashtray is very neat,
if you know what I mean.
Hot-dog.
"Get it here".
I like that message.
That's a good clichd one.
This is in France.
Cherries in the drink...
with of course the nails
echoing the cherries.
I like the closeups from this period,
I was doing it almost exclusively.
These are sort of battered
cans of food
in a food remaindered shop.
These are actual sardines.
They look quite tasty,
I'd have those today.
See how things are passed on.
I like the out-of-focus
asparagus here
and the Brussels sprouts
clearly overcooked,
probably from Susie's father.
While he was taking pictures
of food here
or people on holiday here and there,
other photographers that
seemed serious, including me,
were travelling around of the world
and tried to be the heroes
and the heroines,
the messengers of freedom
while really, truly, the battles
could have been fought here.
And should have been fought here,
like Martin Parr did.
For me, Martin Parr is a soldier
on that respect.
It's a bumpy ride.
He's obsessed.
The collections, oh my God...
The whole house
was taken over with all kinds
of crap... well, I say crap.
His beloved Saddam Hussein watches
or statues of...
Lenin or...
You know, the whole house was filled.
Luckily now
we've got the foundation.
I've got my house back,
my kitchen back.
We had a massive cabinet
in the kitchen
that dominated the whole space.
That's all gone now,
back to the foundation.
It's found its home.
Oh God, yeah,
he's just a massive collector.
Photography fits very well
because a big part of photography
is kind of collecting
every country, every event...
You know, that's what he does.
He said: "I've got all
of these British ceremonies,
I've got to get them all ticked off."
And then, he'll have to have
every Saddam Hussein watch
or every roll
of Barack Obama toilet paper,
whatever it is that he wants.
You have to be obsessed
to be a successful artist
or a successful anything, really.
Of course I'm obsessed.
That's what drives you on.
Depending on the project, he will
invent a new photographic language.
He is not repeating himself.
Upon photographing the fatigue
of Japanese workers
on the subway, he will decide
on a photographic style
and design
and he will stick with it.
I love when he says:
"I don't go on holiday
"because my work is me
"having a good time, being relaxing."
And it's wonderful,
that's a great work ethic...
Having a work ethic that is
encompassing of just enjoying life
and taking part in life.
He's the most hard working person
because he's so driven
and obsessive...
He's always working, you know?
He's had to slow down
because he's been ill.
But before that, he was constantly
on a plane somewhere and...
I mean, he racks up the miles.
He's a very hard worker.
Even in hospital, he was doing
still lives of the food.
In intensive care,
the first sign that he was better...
I went in to see him
and he started
taking photos of the medical team!
So I knew
he was on the mend.
You appreciate the ability to photograph
even more after cancer.
That's one thing
that really sobers you up.
It makes you realize
the basic things, your family,
things you took for granted
are so much more appreciated
in the post cancer world.
It's been a real motivation
for me to do more work.
They're great.
You're all going to be serious
for a minute. Normal faces.
One, two, three, cheese!
One, two, three!
Okay. Nice.
That's it, you can
take the dog again.
No, just hold it out.
Yeah, that's good.
Bring the dog down a bit,
so we can see its face.
One, two, three, cheesy pancakes!
- One, two, three.
- Cheesy pancakes!
You all hold hands now, okay?
That's good.
That's good, nice one.
We have it.
Where's woof woof?
Who's that?
What does this creature
make noises like?
One, two, three.
Okay, we can get higher than that.
The role of the fondation
is very simple: to give a platform
to other documentary photographers,
'cause they're
very underrated in the UK.
For me, this is going
to be part of my legacy.
Not only have I got my own images
of my time in Britain,
but also the collection
that we've built up to really help
to champion the achievements
of other British photographers.
Let me have a look.
Can you put these back?
The Last Resort.\i
Here we go.
Those are the contacts
I did in black and white.
If you look here...
I couldn't afford
to get colour ones done.
Obviously, they were taken in colour.
I wanted them in colour.
But you can make the edit
from the black and white contacts.
It's what I did. So there's that one
which is quite well known.
When we had the show in 2018
or 2019, in New Brighton,
this woman showed up
and kept saying: "This is not my kid,
it was someone else's."
She was looking after him briefly.
And this guy wrote to me
about ten years ago.
I sent his mother a print.
That's her.
There it is in black and white.
Splat the rat.
Mash the mouse.
This is nice, but they're not
dressed in Union Jack.
Just a little limp Union Jack there.
This is nice.
I might put that one in.
This is Charles the 1st
and here's a kid writing with chalk
on the pavement.
In front of the JCB.
"Come join us!"
There's the bar...
in Stourbridge.
Oh yeah, so that's the one
of the three of them together.
Looking deadly serious.
Crowns on.
So that's a good one.
Guys, sorry about this,
could you do a print of this?
- Yeah, okay.
- Just one.
Didn't think much of it.
Hi Susie, come up
and have a cup of tea with me.
Yeah, I think it's tea time.
Let's have a look at this.
It's good. I like the suburban
street, I like the flags here.
I like these three guys.
"God save".
That's quite a good print.
Even though I say it myself.
During the coronation,
someone tweeted: "Oh, look,
it's national Martin Parr day!"
Everything, even on the TV,
looked like a Martin Parr photograph.
The enriched colour of it all,
and the kind of ridiculousness
of the pomp, and all that.
And I think that when we see people
queuing for an ice cream van now,
we think it looks like
a Martin Parr photograph.
He has inveigled his way
into our visual unconscious now.
That is the mark of a true genius.
He's had such a strong vision
and he's able
to technically convey that
over such a vast
sort of oeuvre.
He's made a way of seeing,
which not any people get to do.
One of the reasons that
Martin's work can be controversial
is that he makes us, or asks us
to look at what we try to negate.
When try to say, 'oh no,
it's always beautiful...'
Martin's work is actually
showing us the contrary,
that it's not always beautiful,
and that's okay.
That life is not always
picturesque and beautiful.
Or perhaps that maybe we need
to redefine our notion of beauty.
He's from a middle-class
white background, he's male.
You know... And in the world
of documentary photography,
in British documentary photography,
that set of people
are well represented.
And he knows that Britain
is not just that,
that there are other voices
that aren't represented.
So at the time,
he was really seeking
to get other people
a seat at the table,
to invite them in
to be part of the conversation.
I hope he'll also
be remembered as a humorist
and a satirist. There's satire
in those photographs.
I think he's a satirist.
Because he's reflecting
what's going on
at the time in the country
or wherever he is.
Just signed or...?
Here you go.
Here you go. Thank you.
Hi there.
Exhibitions and books
are important.
They're a great way of displaying
prints, having a good look at them.
The trouble is,
exhibitions come and go
while books stay.
So the book
is the most brilliant way
of getting a photographer's
message across.
Wherever you want.
- Oh my God, on the egg.
- On the egg, yeah.
It's difficult to determine
what makes a good book.
But basically,
you need good pictures.
I know, yeah!
Of course I do, yeah.
And the design should be reflected
in the purpose of the book
and why it's there
in the first place.
Do we have it?
Looks like a Martin Parr photo!
Sultana? Wow!
They're dried grapes in English.
I've never met a Sultana before,
you're my very first.
People don't throw books away.
I've done 120 books.
I'm not gonna tell you
that they're all good.
There are some dodgy ones
in there too.
I've never done that one before.
Very nice. Thank you.
It's amazing, especially
when I go to France,
how many people come up to me
saying they like my work.
It's amazingly flattering, really.
Who doesn't enjoy attention?
Most of the time of course,
no one's bothering me at all.
I go to the supermarket shopping.
It's not like being
a TV superstar, they must be harassed
every time they go anywhere.
I'd hate that to happen.
I have to confess,
I'm pretty obsessed with work.
Everyday I think about it.
So yes, it's taken over my life.
And I'm lucky to have
a supportive partner
like Susie, I think
we make quite a good team.
He was at art college.
He wasn't very prepossessing,
I have to say.
He had a sort of little wispy beard
and wore a Butlin's jacket.
And he was
dancing with a mop
when I first met him at a party.
Martin dances as crazily
as he photographs.
His view of friendship
is rather strange.
Martin is not very talkative.
To understand
if you're his friend or not,
you have to be patient.
But he's very loyal.
He has many different sides.
In fact, he's quite mysterious.
And he doesn't mess about.
He will exchange a few words,
"Hi, how you doing? OK, I gotta go."
He doesn't waste in small talk.
And this is fundamental,
especially when taking pictures.
But in general,
he doesn't do small talk.
He goes straight.
To be frank,
I don't know how he did it all.
That's a great ending.
Because he did so much,
Superman can't even do that.
It's like this insatiable need.
And that's why he's good
at what he does.
Martin's very unassuming.
Brilliantly ordinary.
One of the most iconic
British photographers of all time.
It's shocking.
People love it or they hate it.
But you always have
a reaction to it.
It's exciting, immediate.
He's just shooting,
shooting, shooting.
It's this choreography of life that
he brings together in a single moment.
There are so many
different levels to his work
than something just beautiful.
It's a trademark.
He did what Charlie Chaplin
was doing in silent movies.
Comedy and tragedy.
No one did it in photography.
You do it his way
or it's the highway.
He's changed the way we look.
I guess getting close
is part of my approach.
And sometimes I pull back.
It just depends on the situation.
There aren't really those rules,
but generally speaking
I'm in the midst of things.
It's the only way to survive,
to sort of put together components
in some kind of interesting form.
Extraordinarily,
lots of people don't notice him.
He's so tall,
he usually has a big camera
and he just hangs around in places.
And people sort of just
don't seem to notice him.
He waits for things to appear.
I think I took my first photo
of my father on a frozen stream
in the very cold winter of 1963.
I wanted to record this idea
of him standing on the ice.
A few years later, I went to Yorkshire
and met my grandfather
who was a very keen photographer.
We went out shooting,
processed film, made prints.
The excitement I felt seeing
the pictures come out in the dev
was fantastic.
People believe\i
the more interesting birds\i
are found only in remote places.\i
Yet, with a little encouragement,\i
many birds will come\i
to our yards\i
and gardens.\i
My parents are very keen
bird watchers.
My father was obsessed
and he passed it on to my mother.
I got my obsessive genes from him.
Our trips out would be to places
like Peckham Harbour
to look for waders.
He would put up nets
and birds would fly in.
He'd ring them
and then collect the data.
Of course, it was all about
migratory habits of birds.
By the age of 13 or 14,
I wanted to be a photographer.
Nothing else was gonna happen.
Everybody was out
photographing the English.
But Martin was one of the best ones,
even at that point
of his photographic career.
He was good. You could tell
the difference, at least I can,
when someone has it
and when someone...
is doing the same kind of work
but it's not there, it's not as good.
Martin was one that I would
have crossed off on the list
saying,
look for this one, he's good.
I personally have a massive passion
for the black and white work.
In there, the essence is that
removed nature of looking at people
but still really embedded
to what he sees
and to the visual of the person.
It's all there in the picture.
"I'm looking at you, I'm embedded
in what you're thinking
but I'm staying back
in the distance."
That's the essence of what makes
a Martin Parr picture a picture.
It was more reflective,
more serious,
sort of social documentary,
photographing the chapel communities
and the farming communities.
At that point, he was very...
It was black and white
sort of humanist photography.
In the beginning, he was
very much socially engaged.
We can see by his work
that he is not
a cynical person at all.
His interest
for the social aspects
can be seen more clearly
in his black and white photos.
In his black and white work,
there is a series of abandoned
Morris Minor cars in Ireland.
Following his obsession
with these abandoned cars,
we realise that
they're not just cars,
but cars that were
economically accessible
to the Irish and English
working class for many years.
And with the decline
of the working class in the 70's,
they were left abandoned.
He is already questioning
"what should I photograph and why?"
And "where do I go from here?"
For me,
the black and white work
is the starting point of his legacy.
When you look at the stories
in the black and white images,
if you put them into colour,
they almost would be
like the colour images now.
But it's interesting seeing
his work in black and white
because it completely takes away
what a lot of people know Martin for,
but you can really see that humour
or those excentricities.
It takes a certain kind
of 21-year-old
to be able to go into those spaces,
especially in the 70s and the 80s.
I went to Manchester Polytechnic
and there I met lots of artist friends
and we decided it would be
quite nice to try and move
to a small town in Yorkshire.
What I found most intriguing
was the nonconformist chapels
of which there were many in the area.
I went round to them all
and decided to hone in
on Crimsworth Dean
methodist chapel.
The big event is the anniversary,
the birthday of the chapel.
Then they have two services
and in between time, they serve
a chapel tea. That's something
I photographed extensively.
That to me
was the best event of the year.
I guess I was celebrating the sense
of community Hebden Bridge had.
- I'll show you upstairs.
- Okay.
What's the difference
between baptist and methodist?
You've got me there.
Apart from the fact that
one's baptist and one's methodist.
Good answer!
I remember, this picture
was up in the workshop
in Hebden Bridge.
We used to give people pictures.
Someone wanted to buy a copy,
"but only the bottom half because
I don't know the people on top".
So I had half a photograph extra.
I gave him the whole thing of course.
I look back to the black and white
work with great affection.
I've photographed in black and white
for nearly fifteen years.
It was a great part
of the learning curve.
In the 70s, a serious photographer
had to work in black and white.
Colour was the domain of commercial,
snapshot photography.
It is only in the late 60s
that colour photography
began being taken seriously.
If you look at
his black and white work
after you are solid
in knowing his colour work,
you come to appreciate
not only his early work better,
but also the value
of black and white altogether.
Because it was traditional,
but it's the black and white
that allows
that Martin Parr genius to surface.
And when it surfaces
through black and white,
you get another kick, because
it's not sometning that you expect.
The image of the guy
standing on a ladder
with one foot in the void
is perfect.
He was really, really young,
but he already had a vision,
he already knew what to do.
Stop smiling. Serious portrait.
And now, here's Ozzie.\i
I'd like to show you\i
a new idea in picture taking.\i
A fine 35 millimeter camera\i
by Kodak,\i
called the Automatic 35.\i
It lets you take beautiful colour\i
slides with the right exposure\i
time after time, automatically.\i
Just as your own eyes\i
adjust to changing light,\i
the Kodak Automatic 35 camera\i
with its electric eye meter\i
measures the light\i
and adjusts itself.\i
I'd moved to Ireland in the 80s
for a couple of years.
When I came back,
I decided to go to colour.
Just down the road
was New Brighton.
There was this new camera
called a Plaubel,
it's a 6x7 camera, very easy to use.
I basically changed to colour
and never looked back.
I like seaside resorts because
I wasn't taken to them as a kid.
I've used the beach
as my experimental lab.
When I moved to colour,
it was more of a critique of society.
You're looking for the individual
pictures, but ultimately
you're trying to create a narrative
about what's going on there.
That to me is very much documentary.
It's very difficult
to create a photographic icon.
You can't predict
how and when they'll happen.
They just do happen sometimes.
When you see something
that's very exciting,
very moving, that's the time
when you might get
one of these great pictures.
You're constantly searching for them
and they remain elusive.
But that's what keeps me
being a photographer.
If I only had to go out
and do it automatically,
why would I be interested
in doing it?
That's the challenge.
There's no such thing
as a perfect picture.
Everyday you hope to get one,
but most of the time you don't.
But you have to believe
every morning, before you go out,
that this could be the day
when something happens.
Your job in the first instance
is to record what you see.
You feel the excitement
of what's going on
and very rarely do you get
that same excitement
translated into the image.
That's the skill,
and that's difficult.
In the early 80's, Martin Parr
produces his first colour work.
Colour was the domain of fashion,
it had just arrived
in documentary,
but not in fine art photography.
So Martin's work
was a huge turning point.
He said: "I am
a middle class photographer,
I want to record society
as it is."
When I saw those first pictures
from The Last Resort,\i
it just... For me,
it was incredibly real.
It was how he shot the world
and not how you wanted
the world to be.
That's a really important point.
He was shooting
and he just captured that world.
And I understood it completely.
There had been some jibes about how
he was maybe being condescending
to the working class,
but I didn't see that at all.
Coming from a working class
background, I think
he was just putting the camera
in front of people and captured it.
The choice of the title
"The Last Resort" is a real statement.
It's not just photographs
of holiday makers.
It marks the end
of the working class
in the Thatcher years.
The architecture of his images
is very complex,
yet he managed to deliver
a very clear, pure statement.
Concise,
without a word more,
without an image less,
without one colour more,
without one element less.
- Can we do a picture of them all?
- Yes.
Great. Fantastic.
You make them or you buy them?
Buy them.
Amazing.
You just stand here.
That's great.
Can I do one of you
being serious as well?
Not miserable, just serious.
Just normal. Normal face, yeah?
OK, that's great.
Brilliant, thank you.
I've enjoyed photographing people
and meeting them.
They're crazy, unpredictable,
always interesting.
I like to try and understand
what people are like
just by looking at them.
Clothes, attitude, how they speak.
This is all very entertaining
and very interesting for me.
My main aim is to try
and create an archive
about the time I've lived in Britain.
That in a sense will be my legacy.
Martin Parr became a member\i
of Magnum en 1988.\i
I accompanied him\i
while he was taking photographs\i
for his exhibition and book\i
"Common Sense".\i
It took me a long time
to become a member of Magnum.
Many Magnum photographers
didn't want me to join,
so I had to go through some meetings
where I was rejected.
It's always been a close thing
that I would get enough votes
to become a member.
But I knew it was
the right thing to join
in order to get strong distribution
of the work.
I'm a populist at heart
and I thought that Magnum
offered the best means
of distribution for my pictures.
The objections
to me being a member
was that I was too cynical
and not fitting
into the tradition of humanism
that Magnum's famous for.
Is that purple?
- Yeah, that's purple.
- Right.
When he applied
to the Magnum agency,
half of the Magnum
photographers said:
"If he becomes a member,
we are out!"
And the other half said:
"If he doesn't join, we're has-beens
and we are leaving!"
It's that snobbery.
I think we're akin in that
we both battled to a certain extent
against snobbery
within the culture business.
Which is all down to class
and overintellectualization.
Photography suffers
terribly from academe,
that sort of philosophical waffle.
The view that we look at his work
was regarded at the time,
and Cartier-Bresson found it,
he was an alien...
We've not quite caught up
to how he's taking photographs today.
He's ahead of his time.
Don't be shy!
That's it, got it.
That's brilliant!
With paint as well.
Thanks a lot. Bye.
Snazzy.
Martin shows people as they are.
He just captures the world as it is.
I think people tend to project
their own interpretation and feelings
on those images.
When you see him photograph,
there's no way that you could
call him cruel or anything like that.
Because he's totally involved
in who he is photographing
and who he's trying to capture.
He's really good at saying, like:
"I like your shirt", "I love your hat"
and things like that.
And that really does
make people feel at ease
and it allows him to photograph
people in the way he does.
I like your bag.
Oh no, I want a photograph now!
- Do you?
- Yes.
- I made them myself.
- Did you?
In the beginning of his career,
people said:
"You can't photograph
people like this,
you can't do colour,
you can't use a flash..."
It must have motivated him
to go against the status quo,
and today he doesn't care
about the rules and conventions
of photography.
There's some politics in my work,
but I'm not telling people what it is.
They can discover it
if they want to.
My main project
is the leisure pursuits
of the Western world
within all classes.
Working class
like New Brighton\i
and middle class
like The Cost of Living.\i
I'm looking at people's leisure time,
that's my main subject.
I'm never in a situation
where I wouldn't point a camera
because I don't go to wars,
I don't go and see the world's huge
droughts that we're experiencing.
It's unlikely there would be a place
where I wouldn't take a picture.
I mean, if I a saw a car crash
and someone was dead, I wouldn't.
I love Britain, of course.
We all love the country we come from.
Part of my role is,
if you like, to define
my relationship to being British
and being here.
In a sense I'm trying to show
the yin and yang of British society
and to show it as I find it
as opposed to some idea
of it being romantic or good or bad,
to try to show both things.
One of the good things is that
we have a good sense of humour.
All I'm doing is seeing the things
that I think are interesting,
sometimes funny. People are funny.
So how can the work not be funny
at some point in their production?
But I don't think of myself
as a humorous photographer.
Naturally, life is strange
and life is funny.
Hi there.
May I do a quick portrait?
Brilliant. Thank you very much.
You look great.
Martin's photographs are defined
by their humour and their humanity.
And he's got
a great sense of the absurd.
Humour is so important and underrated.
Culture is biased
againt humour, and yet humour
is what keeps it in check.
There's so much of what I call
performative seriousness in art,
where people think
that misery is somehow
more important in art
than humour.
Humour is what keeps pomposity
and sort of...
unchecked belief.
This man's got a very good
sense of humour,
a needle-sharp eye
for the material culture of our times.
He would laser beam
on the particular food,
the particular garment or make-up.
And that tells a story
about where we are now.
Being able to be funny
is not a cheap gift.
And for him especially,
he's got to find real things
that are funny.
His eyes have got to make it funny.
Why two people enjoying a picnic
outside their car next to a road?
It's funny, isn't it?
It's sort of funny.
But also, you love the subjects too.
A lot of humour is seen as cruel
but I never think
Martin's photographs are cruel.
I just think they're celebrating
eccentricity in all its forms.
Normally, when people
want to capture Britain, it's like
a bridge in London
and the Houses of Parliament behind.
They want certain images
that are quite clichd
that tell the story
'this is Britain'.
But Martin doesn't do that,
he finds some little
sort of garden plates.
I don't think anyone had ever
photographed like that before.
Anywhere he would find
something interesting to photograph.
Of course the signature
of a brilliant photographer is that
wherever he is, he'll find
something interesting.
You can see the responsibility
on my shoulders, right?
Thank you. I've abdicated the throne!
- King Charles!
- Charles!
King Martin the first, please.
- Martin!
- King Martin!
I think it's just a reflection
of society in the UK.
That's what it's
quintessentially about.
You feel the same experience, I think.
There's definitely a place for humour,
particularly when it comes to
the subjects he was photographing
and some of the ideas
about British class.
Britain, even to this day,
is still going on about class
and there are still
kind of class divisions, in its way.
We have a class system
par excellence, \ihere in this country.
And whether we know it or not,
the middle classes are finely attuned
to the gradations of status
within material culture.
Still to this day,
I open the Times newspaper
and there's the supplement
and it's always got
a woman with swooshy hair.
Which is that kind of generic
West London posh.
Always that woman on the front.
Of course, there's that great
Martin Parr photograph
taken at a conservative party event.
And there's a woman
swooshing her hair in just that way.
And I've always associated that...
It's implanted in me.
There's something
about that sort of wholesome,
sort of blandness of the posh.
Brilliant, thank you.
We are gathered
to offer worship and praise
to our mighty God,
to celebrate the life of our nations,
to pray for Charles, our king.
To recognize and to give thanks
for his life of service
to this nation, the realms
and the Commonwealth.
Thank you very much.
Brilliant, thank you.
- Not smiling?
- Hold the flag up.
Yeah, that's good
I'm gonna do a vertical.
- Would you like some glitter?
- Yeah, down here.
- But do it on this side.
- Which is your best side?
Oh, great! Right.
Should we have a picture?
We should have a picture together.
- Who's taking it?
- I don't know. I'm not going to.
I don't think my pictures
are that nasty or harsh.
There's always an element of that,
but what I'm trying to do
is to reflect what I find
in a very subjective way,
and turn it into photographs.
Martin is unique,
he is very free-minded.
He doesn't care about dress sense.
He wears different socks,
an old pair of sandals,
an old jumper...
He's kind of generically ordinary.
And I think that's his camo.
A nature photographer is in camo
so as to not disturb the animals.
That what he is, so he has
to be internationally bland.
The thing is, he's starting to look
anachronistic a little bit
because he's older now.
His idea of bland
is probably out of date.
Yeah, his job
is to blend into the background
and sidle up to things and go...
Flying at more\i
than 300 miles an hour,\i
the Viscount brings Gibraltar\i
within 4 hours\i
of London,\i
and the families to the holiday\i
they've long dreamed about.\i
He became kind of well known with
New Brighton\i and The Last Resort.\i
And then he was off
flying around the world,
going to festivals
and travelling to take photos.
Martin can't swim
but he does love the seaside
and he loves sort of tourist resorts
and things like that.
So we've compromised:
we go to places where I can swim
and he can take photographs.
That works incredibly well.
I'm still excited by seeing
this crazy world that we live in.
Every place I go to,
there is something interesting
that immediately makes me
want to photograph it.
Sometimes people judge
Martin's photos on face value.
As the years went by,
his focus turned to the rise
of global tourism,
which was then ignored.
He was probably the first
to deal with this subject.
He started with the UK
and moved on
to the whole western world.
I remember photographing
on the ferries from France to the UK
when people buy duty free.
And you get these crazy scenes
of people grabbing beer. It's nuts.
I'm happy with those situations
where consumerism goes out of control.
Among other things, I'm trying
to capture how things have changed
with the rise of the hypermarket,
the supermarket.
If you buy a package,
there's always a picture of the food.
But when you open it up,
it looks completely different.
That, I think, shows the basic lie
that we're all being told.
You could argue
that our greed
for all the consumables
is gonna be partly responsible
for global climate warming,
this sort of stuff.
I'm aware of things like this,
and I'm glad my photographs
introduce these topics,
albeit very subtly.
The appearance of food\i
can make the difference\i
to one's appetite.\i
Similarly, its presentation\i
shouldn't be overlooked.\i
You see? Nothing to it.\i
You never know what you can do\i
until you try. Famous last words.\i
Interestingly, junk food
makes better pictures.
I photograph posh food as well,
but it looks like something
out of a magazine.
These days of course,
everyone's photographing food.
In posh restaurants, people
are photographing every course.
At least I was ahead
of that movement.
I can retire from food photography
knowing that the general public
have taken it on.
This is the point about Martin Parr.
He doesn't photograph food
because of the food itself.
He photographs food
as a commentary
on consumerism,
on fast-food,
on tastes,
on the state of healthy living.
It's a crude commentary,
which I think no one really does.
There's something majestic
about seeing
what we normally think of
as very ugly
in a kind of...
I wouldn't say romanticized
but beautiful way.
Beautiful or ugly?
It looks pretty,
but when you get closer it's...
rather revolting.
Maybe he gets
closer than you should
or would.
That's what he wants to show,
that is the message.
"This is just like you,
"this is like us,
this is life as it is
"and not how you want it to be."
The reality of what it is,
that kind of disconnect
between the mythology
and the reality.
He's getting closer
and closer to what
the need of the subject is,
and then exploiting it completely.
Nice wasp
on some cheap strawberry jam.
You can see it's cheap.
It's got no fruits in it.
Here's one from the States,
on the beach.
These are images
from the Common Sense \iproject
which happened in 1999,
where all the close ups I'd taken
in the UK and in Europe
came together into this project.
A phone card in the ashtray.
The ashtray is very neat,
if you know what I mean.
Hot-dog.
"Get it here".
I like that message.
That's a good clichd one.
This is in France.
Cherries in the drink...
with of course the nails
echoing the cherries.
I like the closeups from this period,
I was doing it almost exclusively.
These are sort of battered
cans of food
in a food remaindered shop.
These are actual sardines.
They look quite tasty,
I'd have those today.
See how things are passed on.
I like the out-of-focus
asparagus here
and the Brussels sprouts
clearly overcooked,
probably from Susie's father.
While he was taking pictures
of food here
or people on holiday here and there,
other photographers that
seemed serious, including me,
were travelling around of the world
and tried to be the heroes
and the heroines,
the messengers of freedom
while really, truly, the battles
could have been fought here.
And should have been fought here,
like Martin Parr did.
For me, Martin Parr is a soldier
on that respect.
It's a bumpy ride.
He's obsessed.
The collections, oh my God...
The whole house
was taken over with all kinds
of crap... well, I say crap.
His beloved Saddam Hussein watches
or statues of...
Lenin or...
You know, the whole house was filled.
Luckily now
we've got the foundation.
I've got my house back,
my kitchen back.
We had a massive cabinet
in the kitchen
that dominated the whole space.
That's all gone now,
back to the foundation.
It's found its home.
Oh God, yeah,
he's just a massive collector.
Photography fits very well
because a big part of photography
is kind of collecting
every country, every event...
You know, that's what he does.
He said: "I've got all
of these British ceremonies,
I've got to get them all ticked off."
And then, he'll have to have
every Saddam Hussein watch
or every roll
of Barack Obama toilet paper,
whatever it is that he wants.
You have to be obsessed
to be a successful artist
or a successful anything, really.
Of course I'm obsessed.
That's what drives you on.
Depending on the project, he will
invent a new photographic language.
He is not repeating himself.
Upon photographing the fatigue
of Japanese workers
on the subway, he will decide
on a photographic style
and design
and he will stick with it.
I love when he says:
"I don't go on holiday
"because my work is me
"having a good time, being relaxing."
And it's wonderful,
that's a great work ethic...
Having a work ethic that is
encompassing of just enjoying life
and taking part in life.
He's the most hard working person
because he's so driven
and obsessive...
He's always working, you know?
He's had to slow down
because he's been ill.
But before that, he was constantly
on a plane somewhere and...
I mean, he racks up the miles.
He's a very hard worker.
Even in hospital, he was doing
still lives of the food.
In intensive care,
the first sign that he was better...
I went in to see him
and he started
taking photos of the medical team!
So I knew
he was on the mend.
You appreciate the ability to photograph
even more after cancer.
That's one thing
that really sobers you up.
It makes you realize
the basic things, your family,
things you took for granted
are so much more appreciated
in the post cancer world.
It's been a real motivation
for me to do more work.
They're great.
You're all going to be serious
for a minute. Normal faces.
One, two, three, cheese!
One, two, three!
Okay. Nice.
That's it, you can
take the dog again.
No, just hold it out.
Yeah, that's good.
Bring the dog down a bit,
so we can see its face.
One, two, three, cheesy pancakes!
- One, two, three.
- Cheesy pancakes!
You all hold hands now, okay?
That's good.
That's good, nice one.
We have it.
Where's woof woof?
Who's that?
What does this creature
make noises like?
One, two, three.
Okay, we can get higher than that.
The role of the fondation
is very simple: to give a platform
to other documentary photographers,
'cause they're
very underrated in the UK.
For me, this is going
to be part of my legacy.
Not only have I got my own images
of my time in Britain,
but also the collection
that we've built up to really help
to champion the achievements
of other British photographers.
Let me have a look.
Can you put these back?
The Last Resort.\i
Here we go.
Those are the contacts
I did in black and white.
If you look here...
I couldn't afford
to get colour ones done.
Obviously, they were taken in colour.
I wanted them in colour.
But you can make the edit
from the black and white contacts.
It's what I did. So there's that one
which is quite well known.
When we had the show in 2018
or 2019, in New Brighton,
this woman showed up
and kept saying: "This is not my kid,
it was someone else's."
She was looking after him briefly.
And this guy wrote to me
about ten years ago.
I sent his mother a print.
That's her.
There it is in black and white.
Splat the rat.
Mash the mouse.
This is nice, but they're not
dressed in Union Jack.
Just a little limp Union Jack there.
This is nice.
I might put that one in.
This is Charles the 1st
and here's a kid writing with chalk
on the pavement.
In front of the JCB.
"Come join us!"
There's the bar...
in Stourbridge.
Oh yeah, so that's the one
of the three of them together.
Looking deadly serious.
Crowns on.
So that's a good one.
Guys, sorry about this,
could you do a print of this?
- Yeah, okay.
- Just one.
Didn't think much of it.
Hi Susie, come up
and have a cup of tea with me.
Yeah, I think it's tea time.
Let's have a look at this.
It's good. I like the suburban
street, I like the flags here.
I like these three guys.
"God save".
That's quite a good print.
Even though I say it myself.
During the coronation,
someone tweeted: "Oh, look,
it's national Martin Parr day!"
Everything, even on the TV,
looked like a Martin Parr photograph.
The enriched colour of it all,
and the kind of ridiculousness
of the pomp, and all that.
And I think that when we see people
queuing for an ice cream van now,
we think it looks like
a Martin Parr photograph.
He has inveigled his way
into our visual unconscious now.
That is the mark of a true genius.
He's had such a strong vision
and he's able
to technically convey that
over such a vast
sort of oeuvre.
He's made a way of seeing,
which not any people get to do.
One of the reasons that
Martin's work can be controversial
is that he makes us, or asks us
to look at what we try to negate.
When try to say, 'oh no,
it's always beautiful...'
Martin's work is actually
showing us the contrary,
that it's not always beautiful,
and that's okay.
That life is not always
picturesque and beautiful.
Or perhaps that maybe we need
to redefine our notion of beauty.
He's from a middle-class
white background, he's male.
You know... And in the world
of documentary photography,
in British documentary photography,
that set of people
are well represented.
And he knows that Britain
is not just that,
that there are other voices
that aren't represented.
So at the time,
he was really seeking
to get other people
a seat at the table,
to invite them in
to be part of the conversation.
I hope he'll also
be remembered as a humorist
and a satirist. There's satire
in those photographs.
I think he's a satirist.
Because he's reflecting
what's going on
at the time in the country
or wherever he is.
Just signed or...?
Here you go.
Here you go. Thank you.
Hi there.
Exhibitions and books
are important.
They're a great way of displaying
prints, having a good look at them.
The trouble is,
exhibitions come and go
while books stay.
So the book
is the most brilliant way
of getting a photographer's
message across.
Wherever you want.
- Oh my God, on the egg.
- On the egg, yeah.
It's difficult to determine
what makes a good book.
But basically,
you need good pictures.
I know, yeah!
Of course I do, yeah.
And the design should be reflected
in the purpose of the book
and why it's there
in the first place.
Do we have it?
Looks like a Martin Parr photo!
Sultana? Wow!
They're dried grapes in English.
I've never met a Sultana before,
you're my very first.
People don't throw books away.
I've done 120 books.
I'm not gonna tell you
that they're all good.
There are some dodgy ones
in there too.
I've never done that one before.
Very nice. Thank you.
It's amazing, especially
when I go to France,
how many people come up to me
saying they like my work.
It's amazingly flattering, really.
Who doesn't enjoy attention?
Most of the time of course,
no one's bothering me at all.
I go to the supermarket shopping.
It's not like being
a TV superstar, they must be harassed
every time they go anywhere.
I'd hate that to happen.
I have to confess,
I'm pretty obsessed with work.
Everyday I think about it.
So yes, it's taken over my life.
And I'm lucky to have
a supportive partner
like Susie, I think
we make quite a good team.
He was at art college.
He wasn't very prepossessing,
I have to say.
He had a sort of little wispy beard
and wore a Butlin's jacket.
And he was
dancing with a mop
when I first met him at a party.
Martin dances as crazily
as he photographs.
His view of friendship
is rather strange.
Martin is not very talkative.
To understand
if you're his friend or not,
you have to be patient.
But he's very loyal.
He has many different sides.
In fact, he's quite mysterious.
And he doesn't mess about.
He will exchange a few words,
"Hi, how you doing? OK, I gotta go."
He doesn't waste in small talk.
And this is fundamental,
especially when taking pictures.
But in general,
he doesn't do small talk.
He goes straight.
To be frank,
I don't know how he did it all.
That's a great ending.
Because he did so much,
Superman can't even do that.
It's like this insatiable need.
And that's why he's good
at what he does.