“He Documented The Realism Of Life And Made You See The World As It Was”: Friends, Fans And Collaborators Remember Martin Parr

Sir Paul Smith, Margaret Howell CBE, Han Chong and more reflect on the marvel of British photography.

“One hears, ‘That looks like a Martin Parr,’” documentary photographer David Hurn notes. “I can think of no other photographer who has had that accolade.” If there are some media in which widespread public recognition of the artist comes particularly sparsely, then photography is one. As Hurn highlights, true public lionisation is close to a once-in- a-generation event.

It’s perhaps no surprise that for his generation, Parr would be one of the few to step up to the mantle. The Surrey-born lensman became known for keeping the lights on in his documentary photography by the 1980s, rejecting others’ monochrome tendencies, instead centring colour. And a saturated, garish colour wheel at that. Where his forefathers prioritised society’s solemn or seismic episodes, Parr made the mundane momentous. The supermarket, the overspilling ashtray, the charm of England’s seaside resorts. Benidorm!

His breakout monograph, The Last Resort, documenting working-class holidaymakers in Merseyside’s New Brighton, met a Marmite reception upon release. However, the additive-rich, tragicomic take on anthropology only rose in public estimations. By the time of noughties re-releases, it was as much a classic as the funfair is kitsch. He’d later take his eye further afield – from Tokyo to Pisa, Beijing and Bethlehem. By 2002, he boasted a retrospective at the Barbican, having been a member (and later president) of esteemed international agency Magnum Photos since 1994. In 2014, he established the Martin Parr Foundation – a means to platform British photography that, like his, defined cultural conversations.

Until the months before his passing, aged 73 in December 2025, he was working at the sharp end of his craft and saving a seat for the next generation of creatives. He released a tribute to 1990s domestic Britain – Julie Bullard – alongside future photography icon Nadia Lee Cohen last June. A broadsheet cover story shot by Parr, starring Harry Styles, was released posthumously in February.

And this year was always going to be a significant one for the Parr story. East London’s Rocket Gallery will celebrate 40 years of The Last Resort this autumn, featuring C-type photos derived from original negatives, contact sheets, ephemera and the exhaustive collection of the book’s re-releases. Representing Parr since 1997, Rocket is now the official London gallery home of the Estate.

Below, we gather friends, collaborators and subjects of Parr to share memories of the man who across five decades, with sugar and satire, became a master of memorialising the everyday.

Rinko Kawauchi.

The Japanese photographer collaborated with Parr on multiple projects, including the 2010 Brighton Photo Biennial and 2004 Rencontres de la Photographie.

What’s your earliest memory of encountering the work of Martin Parr?

Common Sense.

What’s something that Martin said to you when you worked together that really stuck with you?

When I received the Outstanding Contribution to Photography Award in 2023, a video message from Martin, congratulating me, was shown at the ceremony. The words he spoke in it have stayed with me deeply. At the end, he said the following. “Keep shooting, keep taking pictures, keep going, don’t give up. I know you will, because you’ve got the bug. I’ve got the bug. And we just have to keep going. So, thank you, Rinko, for all your work.” When I heard it, my heart swelled with emotion, and tears welled up in my eyes. 

What’s the one Martin Parr image you always come back to?

The photo of a child’s hand holding a half-eaten doughnut [from] Common Sense.

Han Chong.

Parr captured backstage moments at the 2023 British Fashion Awards for self-portrait, the London-based brand founded by Chong in 2013.

“I was first exposed to Martin’s work when I was a student in London. I still vividly remember how unique his style of pictures was. There really wasn’t anyone else documenting Britain like that. Years later, I was so grateful and humbled to have worked with Martin on a project of our own. What struck me most was the honesty he brought to every moment. It was never forced. It was just human. His humour, precision, and ability to celebrate the ordinary made his work completely distinctive. Our industry has lost a real gentleman and a true original.” 

Sir Paul Smith.

Smith’s eponymous brand enjoyed a decades-spanning collaboration with Parr – including a 2007 single-issue publication Fashion Newspaper and a 2017 swimwear capsule collection.

What’s your earliest memory of encountering the work of Martin Parr?

I can’t say I remember the first encounter, but it was always a joy to see him. Never a dull moment with Martin!

What about Martin’s work made you see the world differently?

Finding humour in everyday life, exploring Britishness, having a fresh perspective, capturing the caught moment. Martin was a master of it all. We were connected by our mutual love for finding joy in everyday life, and we had the opportunity to work together on multiple projects to explore that.

What’s the one Martin Parr image you always come back to?

I had a fantastic opportunity to work with Martin on a small capsule collection. We printed a selection of his iconic beach photographs onto Paul Smith swimwear. I have a pair of the shorts framed in my office, and they always bring a smile when I see them.

What defining spirit do you think Martin’s work will be remembered for?

I hope that people will remember him for celebrating the beauty in our everyday lives.

Alastair McKimm.

The prototype_ Editor-in-Chief and Chief Creative Officer of Visual Talent Group has been a fan of Parr for over two decades.

What’s your earliest memory of encountering the work of Martin Parr?

It must have been in the late ’90s. I discovered a lot of British photography when I moved to Nottingham and started art school.

What about Martin’s work made you see the world differently?

The saturated colour! It was shocking as I had always envisioned British landscapes in black and white.

What’s the one Martin Parr image you always come back to?

It’s not necessarily a specific image, but I always come back to the Union Jack. The bright red and blue. Coming from Belfast, the Union Jack is such a political statement which brings up a lot of mixed emotions.

What defining spirit do you think Martin’s work will be remembered for?

The working class hero!

Robert Diament.

The British gallerist and Talk Art host discovered Parr’s work in his teens.

What’s your earliest memory of encountering the work of Martin Parr?

I remember seeing his work in the ’90s, predominantly his work on the British seaside, and Brighton and Margate beaches. In my teens, I really connected to the humour in his work, but the intensity of the colours too.

What about Martin’s work made you see the world differently?

Growing up, I found the rules of suburbia to be quite ridiculous and stifling, and I loved how he chose to present British society. It felt critical and analytical, but at the same time tender and obviously funny. I adore the absurdity within his ’70s photo of bird watchers, for example, which, if I remember correctly, was a formative work for Martin, taken at his local bird watching club. His work made me realise photography’s potential to transform the banality of human experience into something surreal, seductive and odd.

What’s the one Martin Parr image you always come back to?

I love his ongoing series of photos in petrol stations, because it’s such an unlikely location and they can look so beautiful, almost like a still from a film set. There’s one he took in 1986 in Salford of a man filling the car up at the pump, and a woman staring out of the passenger seat window. I love the stillness in that image and the light reflecting on the black car surface, too.

I also really love his Welsh beach scenes of Tenby, because they remind me of my own childhood visits, as my dad grew up there. I also read once that Martin himself rated Tenby as his number one British beach resort, which is pretty impressive considering he photographed and visited so many resorts nationwide.

What defining spirit do you think Martin’s work will be remembered for?

I love the curiosity in Martin’s work. The intense enthusiasm he had for looking and discovering the world around him. He created an impressive body of work with very simple tools. His strength was his ability to trust his own curiosity and to follow it. His photos offer a fascinating insight into human consciousness, what makes us tick or motivates us, and how we build the world around us.

Simon Hill HonFRPS.

The editorial and documentary photographer, who has been President of the Royal Photographic Society since 2021, was a fan and later friend of Parr’s.

What’s your earliest memory of encountering the work of Martin Parr?

My earliest encounter with Martin’s work dates back to the early ’80s, when I was a photography student trying to get a sense of how the boundaries of documentary practice were being stretched. What struck me about Martin’s images, even then, was how they seemed to disrupt the accepted visual language of the documentary genre. There was a boldness in his use of colour, an almost confrontational directness in the framing, and a willingness to focus on the ordinary and everyday events of leisure, consumption and social ritual. He did this in ways that felt both humorous and slightly unsettling.

What about Martin’s work made you see the world differently?

At the time, I remember being both intrigued and slightly disorientated by Martin’s work. It didn’t immediately resolve into a clear moral or narrative position; instead, it seemed to hold a mirror up to British life that was at once affectionate and critical. As a photography student, that was an important moment; realising that documentary photography could be ambiguous, ironic and visually provocative, rather than simply descriptive or didactic. 

Looking back, that early encounter was formative. It expanded my understanding of what documentary could be and opened up a space for thinking about photography not just as a means of recording the world but as a way of interpreting and questioning it.

What’s the one Martin Parr image you always come back to?

I’ve always liked the photograph of the thermal bath in Budapest – so close and personal with everything that is happening there – but my absolute favourite must be that wonderfully awkward, sharply observed photograph from The Last Resort: the boy holding two ice cream cones while his gaze drifts, unmistakably, toward the young waitress’s chest. For me, it encapsulates so much of what makes Martin’s work so compelling: the humour, the discomfort, the social observation, all held in a single, deceptively simple frame.

That image also carries a very personal significance for me. After Martin and I became friends, he gave me a signed copy of that photograph in exchange for one of my own prints when he wanted to include my work in the collection at his Foundation in Bristol. It was a genuine “swap” and I remember feeling both incredibly surprised and deeply honoured. To move from studying his work as a student in the early ’80s to exchanging prints with him, some 40 years later, felt like a kind of full-circle moment, and one I shall always treasure.

What defining spirit do you think Martin’s work will be remembered for?

Martin’s work is uniquely sharp, unflinching and an often mischievous examination of everyday life; particularly the rituals, habits and contradictions of consumer culture. He’ll also be remembered for redefining what documentary photography could look like. But perhaps the most enduring spirit will be the way his work held a mirror up to society – particularly British society – and invites us to look at ourselves with a mixture of recognition and discomfort. That combination of clarity, irony and insight is, above everything else, the spirit that will define his legacy.

-M- aka Matthieu Chedid.

The award-winning French multi-instrumentalist collaborated with Parr on MMM, a multisensory 2015-17 exhibition, which coupled specially-created Chedid music with Parr photography.

What’s your earliest memory of encountering the work of Martin Parr?

My first real discovery of his work was his exhibition at the Jeu de Paume, in the Jardin des Tuileries, in 2009. A friend had told me about it, and we went there together. I truly discovered his work that day, and it was a powerful and immediate shock.

What about Martin’s work made you see the world differently?

It’s the simple idea of realising that the rough, the raw and the kitsch can be extraordinarily beautiful. I was completely stunned to perceive something sublime in what is most crude. I could even say finding the sublime in the ugly. Attraction in what is repulsive. And there is also that tenderness toward humanity and its excesses. That really captures the full dimension of the artist: seeing things that might at first appear trivial. That is also his strength – making the ordinary extraordinary. That’s something truly remarkable. 

And then there’s the whole dimension of English culture (as maybe seen by a French person). In my view, only an English person can do this with such humour. I immediately recognised that quality I had loved in Monty Python and Mr Bean, for example – suddenly, a kind of offbeat, slightly absurd shift, while still retaining depth and poetry. That very English universe resonated with me right away.

What’s the one Martin Parr image you always come back to?

I’m lucky enough to have two large prints at home, including those of that artificial beach in Japan (the Beach Therapy series), which I look at every day and which perfectly illustrate his world. The contrast of an artificial environment elevated by Martin’s gaze.

What defining spirit do you think Martin’s work will be remembered for?

It’s really about the idea of overconsumption, the excesses of humankind, and this westernised, industrialised world. I am, of course, thinking of mass tourism in today’s world. It portrays human madness, staged in a highly stylised, graphic way. Perhaps it’s a tender look at human folly – on our decline, our drift. It reflects the world we live in today, a world that is almost dehumanised.

What I find particularly compelling is this self-reflexive structure he invites us into. Humanity strips the world of its poetry, and Martin Parr captures that with great poetic sensitivity.

David Hurn.

The documentary photographer was a close friend of Parr, mutual admirer and fellow Magnum Photos member.

What’s your earliest memory of encountering the work of Martin Parr?

I first encountered Martin when he had his final graduation show from Manchester Polytechnic. My memory is that it was at the Arnolfini, Bristol, but it might have been Impressions Gallery in York – my memory is hazy. I bought what I am sure was his first sold picture, a circus performer now in the National Museum Cardiff. My memory is that it cost £6. We were friends ever after.

What’s the one Martin Parr image you always come back to?

I personally enjoy Martin’s Bad Weather book. It was so inventive, so tenacious. Anything from this is a delight.

What defining spirit do you think Martin’s work will be remembered for?

He was loved by the public; what more can you ask? One hears, “That looks like a Martin Parr.” I can think of no other photographer who has had that accolade.

Dame Zandra Rhodes.

The fashion designer was shot by Parr for his 2011 exhibition, What Would You Save in a Flood?

What’s your earliest memory of encountering the work of Martin Parr?

His wonderful [2002] retrospective exhibition at the Barbican.

What’s something that Martin said to you when you worked together that really stuck with you?

When Martin took my portrait, he chose to capture me holding my sketchbook. Most people know me as a fashion designer, but he chose to capture me with the starting point for my hand-drawn printed textile designs. As an artist, he understood my creative process and that stuck with me.

What’s the one Martin Parr image you always come back to?

His iconic images of the British seaside! He is a true original.

Find out more about Rocket Gallery at www.rocketgallery.com