Martin Parr

Martin Parr was born in 1962 in Epsom, Surrey, UK. As a boy, his interest in photography was encouraged by his grandfather George Parr, himself a keen amateur photographer. Parr studied photography at Manchester Polytechnic from 1970 to 1973. To support his career as a freelance photographer, he took on various teaching assignments between 1975 and the early 1990s. At the beginning of the 1980s his work aimed to mirror the lifestyle of ordinary British people, reflecting the social decline and distress of the working class during the era of Margaret Thatcher. He earned an international reputation for his oblique approach to social documentary, and for innovative imagery. In 1994 he became a member of Magnum after much heated debate over his provocative photographic style.

For Parr, the moral atrophy and preposterousness of our daily lives means we can only find salvation through adopting a certain sense of humor. The banality, boredom and lack of meaning of modern times are portrayed in works such as Bored Couples and Common Sense. In 2002 Phaidon published the Martin Parr monograph. Parr was appointed Professor of Photography at The University of Wales Newport campus from 2004 to 2012. In 2013, Martin was appointed visiting Professor of Photography at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. In recent years, he has developed an interest in film-making, and has started to use his photography in different contexts, such as fashion and advertising.

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• Life's a beach

  Martin Parr has been photographing this subject over many decades, documenting all aspects of this tradition including close ups of sun bathers, swimming dips and picnics.

  Parr’s International career was kicked started with his notorious book of 1986, The Last Resort, which depicted the run down seaside resort of New Brighton, very near Liverpool. However less well known is that this obsession has also spread across the world, and with this new compilation we see photos from countries as far apart as China, Argentina and Thailand. This exhibition demonstrates Parr engagement with a cherished subject matter, where all absurdities and quirky National behaviours seamlessly fuse together. We delight in how different countries in Latin America have a wildly different dress sense on the beach, from the skimpy costumes of Brazil to the drinking of mate of Uruguay. There is also, of course, the selling of goods, for the beach is a prime place to sell, well basically anything, from the services of an ear cleaner in Goa, India, the barbequed fish of Chile and pot noodles in China.