Martin Parr did not hand out business cards. Instead, he carried personalised, foil-stamped return address stickers that he got from one of those companies that used to give them away as promotions. He would cut them into little rectangles and pass them out when he met someone new. When, as a young curator, I was lucky enough to receive one of these improvised ‘cards’, I promised not to lose it. ‘The only problem,’ I said, is ‘I’m going to have to figure out where to stick it.’ ‘That’s the point,’ he laughed, flashing the warm, mischievous smile that those around him knew so well.
Martin always insisted he was a documentary photographer. Not an ‘art photographer’, commentator or satirist, but a documentarian. At first I did not believe him, since his photographs do not fit the mould of conventional reportage – his sense of humour and eye for absurdity were ever-present in his work. But I have come around to his way of thinking. He only ever photographed people and things he observed in life, never posing or setting up a scene. In retrospect, Martin was not just a documentary photographer, he was arguably Britain’s greatest; a one-of-a-kind figure whose influence, example and advocacy will be felt long into the future.
It is perhaps worth noting that Martin entered the field just as Diane Arbus, who died by her own hand in 1971, exited it. Although the working-class populations they were drawn to were similar, their approaches could hardly have been more different – she, with her abiding sense of alienation and social cruelty; he, with his humane and often humorous appreciation for others in compromising circumstances. His pictures of residents of Prestwich Mental Hospital, for example, made while he was still a student at Manchester Polytechnic, highlight the distinctive identities of those confined there. They are by turns funny, despairing and achingly beautiful. In some of them, patients dance and kid in spite of their predicament, like optimists in a play by Samuel Beckett.
Martin marvelled at the resilience of those he portrayed. In his debut monograph Bad Weather (1982) his subjects were at once stoic and creative, undaunted by the rain, wind and drizzle endemic to life in Britain and Ireland, where he lived from 1980–82. Improvising makeshift brollies and donning boots and slickers, people nevertheless visit the beach, take walks in the park or go to sporting events. Weather was the first of a string of landmark books that would come to define the era, including Small World, The Cost of Living, Common Sense and Think of England, to name only four. In all, he published nearly 100 books in his career, many of them bestsellers.
The Last Resort (1986), featuring visitors to New Brighton, Merseyside, marked a decisive shift into the colour photography for which he is now well known. Martin became a key figure in a second wave after the ‘new colour’ movement of 1970s, centred around the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Martin specifically referred to colour pioneers William Eggleston and Stephen Shore as influences. In Britain, he acknowledged mercurial black-and-white photographer Tony Ray-Jones, whose puckish pictures of British life and culture suggested an alternative to the self-conscious introspection of much post-war photography. Parr married these two traditions – new colour and British cultural mischief – creating a third form entirely his own.
Few photographers understood photo history better than Martin Parr. An inveterate collector of photo books (among many other things), he collaborated with historian Gerry Badger to create a three-volume opus, The Photobook: A History (2004–14). Subsequently, in 2017, Martin sold his personal collection of photo books to the Tate, which acquired them with the help of the Luma Foundation. The proceeds, and subsequent lucrative fashion commissions, enabled him to set up the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol, providing much-needed exhibition space and archive for emerging and neglected photographers. At a time when the field is increasingly squeezed, the foundation represents a rare bright spot in the nation’s photographic fortunes.
Shortly after publication, Last Resort became a lightning rod for criticism of Martin’s work, some of which lingers even now. Some viewed the project as condescending, since it seemed to show working-class people in squalid conditions, behaving badly, on cheap and cheerful holidays. Yet Martin never looked down on his sitters – he embraced the silliness, incongruity and inventiveness of those he photographed. His self-deprecating sense of humour, never far from the surface, was affectionate and inclusive. He truly loved Britain in all its quirky glory and admired the creativity with which people adapted in the face of the relentless onslaught of consumerism, the travel and leisure industry, cultural expectations and status pressures. He specialised in photographs of things not quite working out – situations where hope and promise don’t quite match reality. The things we do in the face of such adversity are, if not ludicrous, then at least a bit peculiar.
Martin was also great fun. Working together with him on the book and exhibition Only Human at the National Portrait Gallery, I remember dissolving into laughter when something tickled us. The prospect of Brexit concerned him deeply and motivated much of the work he produced in the run-up to our show. Yet he was not afraid to be positive when the situation called for it. His pictures of dancers around the world (Everybody Dance Now), the Bristol Pride Parade March and the Notting Hill Carnival are pure happiness – what ecstasy looks like when captured on camera.
As time wore on, I came to appreciate how very Parrian the sticker Martin had given me was. It was a tatty piece of mass marketing – familiar, aspirational and inconsequential in itself. At the same time, stickers are practical, since they are cheaper than getting proper cards made – and handy if you ever needed to post Martin a letter. He had great affection for such things. The one he gave me remained tucked inside my wallet for years, until the adhesive perished and the paper began to separate. His example, and friendship, will last much longer.
Phillip Prodger is former head of photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, London, and author of Martin Parr: Only Human (Phaidon).