Martin Parr

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0:13Welcome to This Cultural Life, the series in which leading artistic figures reveal the cultural turning points of their lives, the influences and experiences that inspired their own creativity. I'm John Wilson and my guest in this episode is the photographer Martin Parr. Everyday British scenes are witnessed through Parr's lens. He made his name with moody monochrome images of life in Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire. But he's perhaps best known for sunburnt bodies on beaches printed in saturated colour. His photographs are often witty and satirical. He's published over 100 books of his work, has exhibited all around the world and is now regarded as one of Britain's greatest photographers.

0:55Martin Parr, welcome to This Cultural Life. Thank you. You were born in Epsom in Surrey in 1952. So we're talking about post-war suburbia. What was it like growing up there? What are your memories? I mean, suburbia is quite boring, but you didn't really know that because you didn't go to other places. What I do remember is that my parents were very keen bird watchers. Therefore, when we were going out for a day trip, we'd go to places like Pagham Harbour to see waders. And my father used to ring birds every Saturday in Hersham Sewage Works Ring them? Ring them. And that's where you catch them in a mist net and then you put these metal rings on and then you can identify them when you get them back or you can observe migration, things like this.

1:39So I spent my youth at Horsham Sewage Works. So are you one of those people that can just see a bird flash past in the sky and know immediately what it is? No. I mean, I like the birds, but what made me become a train spotter, which is the first of my collecting habits that I introduced was the fact that we were going, you know, the main Bournemouth line, Waterloo Bournemouth, was next to Herschel Sewage Works, so I spotted the trains. Oh, I see, so trains instead of birds. But the important thing is watching. Yes. Observation. And that is one of the traits of your photography, isn't it? That you are the great watcher of people.

2:17Exactly, and obsession. My father was an obsessed bird watcher. Ah. And I learnt my obsessive genes from him, I guess. Is that patience as well? Because you have to sit around for a long time waiting for the moment. As a photographer, you have to wait for the right bird. Yeah, and often you fail. You know, I often think about my photographs and how many bad ones I take in the search for a good one. You know, if you only went out in the morning and said, I'm just going to take good pictures today, you'd never start. So you have to take bad pictures to get into the habit of taking maybe a good one.

2:47And is that similar to what your father was doing? Did he go out in search of a particular bird? Yes, indeed. I mean, we went to Thursley Common looking for Dartford warblers. That's the one bird I remember. And when he wrote his book on the birds of Surrey, there was a Dartford warble on the front cover. So that was the thing that he was looking for their summer migrants. So they only come in the summer, I think. And he loved to see them. And they became an emblem of his collecting obsession. How often were you out there with him on these watching missions? Quite often, really, yeah. I mean, this is what we did as a family.

3:25this by the way is why I'm so obsessed with the British seaside because I didn't go and witness British seaside when I was a kid it was the version I saw was Pagham Harbour so ever since then I've been wanting to get back to the garish seaside and you may know but during my career I've done a lot of projects about the beach yes and we're going to come to that but that's interesting so you were denied the delights of the bucket and the spade and the ice cream and you've celebrated that in so many of the photographs, as we will discuss later. That wasn't his job. What did he do? He was a civil servant in the Department of Environment.

3:59He worked at Tolworth. I was living in Ashtead and he would commute and I went to Serpent and Grammar. I just scraped my A-level. But Serpent and Grammar was very important to me because there I met Phil Harris, who is my craft teacher, and he subscribed to a magazine called Creative Camera. And in the 60s, which is when I was at school, you would see the new photography coming from America people like Robert Frank, Gary Winogrand and these were a great inspiration to me because you didn't have anything contemporary in the British photo scene back in the 60s like you saw in America And just take yourself back to the family house was it a cultural, artistic household when you think were there photographs, pictures, paintings, books, music?

4:44Not particularly, no there was a few books around of course bird books mainly. And apart from that, there wasn't really that much culture. I don't remember being taken to museums as a kid. Well, on This Cultural Life, I asked my guest to choose some of the most significant cultural influences. And your first choice is your grandfather. Why have you chosen him? Well, I remember I was living in Surrey, so I went up north to Calverley, which is near Bradford, and it was fantastic to stay there. I mean, first off, you have this community which is very friendly. And secondly, and most important to me, he was a keen amateur photographer.

5:24He was a fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. He was in the Brom Oil group. And this is a technique that I don't think they basically do anymore, where you get a photograph, you bleach it out, and then you re-ink it with these big brushes. And you therefore can control the tones and almost the composition. And he was in a Brom Oil circle. So he would be sent a picture and he would make comments about the composition. This bit is a bit too dark, a bit too light, or the tree should have been a bit further over the left. And then they would be sent round to the other 10 photographers in that group.

5:58And after, you know, six months, nine months, you get the picture back with all these comments from all 10 of the photographers. But the photograph itself, you say it's bleached out and then painted back in. Monochrome or do you actually paint the colour in? No, it's all monochrome and very pictorial. but I do remember one picture that I absolutely love called the white umbrella it wasn't really a bromoyle it's one he took in a park and there's this woman up with a white umbrella really stands out in the picture and that I think is my if you like one of the first photographs that I saw that I was really inspired by but what was good for me was that he lent me a camera, we went to Scarborough together we processed the film, made prints and I'd say by the age of 13 I decided that I wanted to be a photographer.

6:44So he was your introduction to photography? Totally, yeah. I presume he also introduced you to the practicality, the mechanics of photography, how you open the back of the camera, winding the film, all of those aspects. Totally, yeah. And going to see a print for the first time, you know, in that red light and the print coming up in the developer, that is just so exciting. And then I would go and see the IPA, the International Photography Exhibition in London, which he was always in. and there I saw a lot more photographs but I also saw in the late 60s, 69 I believe, the Bill Brandt show at the Hayward and also there was a Cartier-Bresson show as well in London in that year.

7:22Monsieur Henri Cartier-Bresson, it seems to me that you're doing two kinds of photography. One is very personal and related to ordinary human beings and the other connected with events that are happening in various parts of the world. For me, taking photographs is keeping my diary or a sketchbook. With a camera, you can draw with intuition in immediacy. Yes, it is almost instantaneous. Instantaneous drawing. And there's no eraser. It's the next photograph. You have to situate yourself to what you see emotionally and in space. And it's a fight with time. Photography is a constant fight with time.

8:03And your grandfather introduced you to these shows, these photographers? No, he didn't, actually, because he wasn't particularly aware of any creative photography. He was into the pictorial images that Brome Oil produced. But he was good enough or serious enough about it to be involved or to be exhibited at the International, what did you call it, the International Photography Exhibition? The IPE was very pictorial. I mean, you have to remember that in the 40s and 50s, the Royal Photographic Society almost held Britain back from developing a sort of better photography culture. If you look at France and America, photographers are coming out of the woodwork, they were being lauded.

8:42So we were really behind. And the IPE and the Royal Photographic Society really, if you like, epitomised that delay that we had in understanding contemporary photography culture. What was the first photograph you took? I can't remember precisely. I mean, I do remember taking a picture of my father on the frozen stream by our house in the very bad winter of 63. That must have been when I was 11. So you had your own camera by this time, or was this one of your grandfather's cameras? That came a bit later. That's when I was 13, 14, that kind of age. And what happened when you got your first camera?

9:15It was exciting. We went out to the Dales. I've always loved the Dales. and I took pictures up there. I took pictures of things like the pedestrian bridge in Ashtead where I was living and slowly but surely did some pictures. The Serbiton Grammar magazine commissioned me, if you like. So they were my first published pictures, in fact. So that was in 69. I would have been 17 then. So you were starting to take it more seriously by this point. Had you already decided that photography was your life? I was serious before that. Yeah, I knew there's only one thing I had to do. There was never any doubt about it.

9:50Oh, really? Okay. And I went and did it. And then I applied for places in three of the best photo schools in those days, Manchester, Derby and Farnham. And in fact, because I only got one A-level, because I was pretty useless at these things, I had to go to Manchester as the only college that would take me. And when I think back, if I'd have got two A-levels and I'd have gone to Derby, my life would have been so different. So in a sense, I've had a fantastic life. I've met great people that, if you like, pointed me towards going to photograph at New Brighton in the 80s. All these things that have happened in my life, you know, happened because I failed my English A-level.

10:30What was it about photography? Was it capturing the image? Was it the observational quality? I think, you know, it's my way of connecting to the world that I live in. And I still apply that basic idea now. I look at a photograph and I, you know, even bad photographs, I can look at them and enjoy them. We started off talking about how your grandfather introduced you, in a way, to photography. Did he see your success? I think he saw the first show that I did called Home Sweet Home at the Impressions Gallery in York. So he saw that, but he died, I think, quite soon after that was shown. So he didn't really see how things developed later on in my career.

11:05But, you know, his shadow is there all the time. Would he like your photography? I think Home Sweet Home, which is basically a conceptual show, he didn't much like it, basically. You know, he had his pictorial roots. But I think there would have been pictures taken in black and white in Hebden Bridge that he'd have appreciated, but sadly he didn't see those. You say a pictorial photographer is a very formal, very nice composed images. Yes, I mean, old buildings, bridges, trees. I think you know. I've got them in my mind. I can see them right in front of me. And Home Sweet Home was your series of images.

11:40That was people's houses, again, very quirky images, people standing in front of flock wallpaper or garish curtains or sofas. That's right. Domestic life. That's an exhibition I did for my diploma show at Manchester Polytechnic. I built a living room, I photographed things from other people's living rooms and put them into mine. So it's quite a conceptual project. So your grandfather didn't like Home Sweet Home? He wasn't too keen on it? Not particularly. It was too wacky for him. What would he have made of sunburnt people on Abednador Beach? I don't know. So it's probably just as well he's not there.

12:14He might not have appreciated it. Your next choice, Martin, is being introduced to the work of the pioneering British street photographer Tony Ray Jones when you were studying photography in Manchester at the Polytechnic. Can you remember first seeing the work of Tony Ray Jones? I can remember it so clearly. A guy called Bill Jay, who is the editor of Creative Camera, I'd seen that magazine in the late 60s when I was at Serbis and Grammar. but he showed the work of Tony Ray Jones, and I hadn't seen it before. And Tony Ray Jones was basically a photographer who came out in the early 60s, went over to America and studied photography there.

12:54And there he was with Brodovich, this famous designer, and he was introduced to all the photographers that were part of the American contemporary scene, Winogrand, Frank, Dian Arbus. He met them all, and he, if you like, took the language that had developed in America and then brought it back to the UK. And in the late 60s, he went on this journey with his wife and a camper van and went round Britain photographing. Sadly, he died very young at the age of 30 in 1972. But the book of his work called A Day Off came out a year after his death. And I remember queuing up in the bookshop in Manchester to get a copy of this amazing book.

13:36And that really showed me what was possible. and in a sense it's always been the mantra for me if I can get pictures as good as him, I'd be very happy. What was it about his photography that struck you? I suppose he was photographing not the narrative but the whole spatial awareness of a scene in front of you. So he is much photographing the gaps between things as the actual thing itself. Is there one image that sticks in your mind that you could describe? Well, I guess my favourite image is Margate which is where you see this pier and a kid running out, a dog in the background. It's just got this amazing atmosphere.

14:11And my relationship with Jones has continued. I've met his widow, Anna Rae Jones, and had great conversations with her. And about 10 years ago, the Science Museum invited me to go into their archive and to look through the contact prints of Tony Rae Jones. And there we found other great pictures. We had those printed, and together with his classic pictures, and indeed my pictures from the 70s in Hebden Bridge, they were shown at the Science Museum. And you were shown alongside Tony Rae Jones. You curated that exhibition. and he was inviting us as viewers to look at the similarities and the clear influence.

14:45And he is, as you say, best known for those images of Brighton Beach. You later went to New Brighton Beach in Merseyside for your project, The Last Resort. Were you consciously at the time when you were at New Brighton thinking of Tony Ray Jones? Well, I was because I've thought about Tony Ray Jones all my life. You know, his images are sort of pressed into my consciousness. I could almost get out and draw them in front of you now. and indeed I think going to New Brighton in the early 80s was an important thing for me but also remember I photographed beaches in black and white before that you know in the 70s you worked in black and white if you're a serious photographer colour was regarded as a domain of commercial photography and amateur photography so I went to black and white without really thinking about it and it's only in the late 70s that we began to see colour photography emerge first in America the famous show at MoMA of Eggleston.

15:41William Eggleston. And there's the other people like Stephen Shaw, Joel Mayer. It's this whole generation of colour photographers who are still around and they were put into a book called The New Colour by a woman called Sally O 'Claire and she was coming to England and doing talks so we met her and were introduced to this work. As you say, that William Eggleston show at MoMA in the early 70s... 76. 76, mid-70s, I mean, that was a landmark show because people then could take photography in colour seriously. At that point, did it open the door for you? Did it give you licence to go and use colour film?

16:12It made me think I can be a colour photographer and be taken seriously. Interestingly, the Eggleston show in New York was completely panned by the critics. They said this is a rubbish show. I mean, it's remarkable to read these criticisms, you know, 30, 40 years later, and to see how wrong they were. These scathing reviews came out, and I said, well, they just need to go back and look at them again. And that's all I can say. These are pretty silly reviews. Made me think that who was writing this particular piece had not really seriously looked at the photographs on the wall. And he's one of the great photographers of all time.

16:56Absolutely. So take us to New Brighton Beach on Merseyside, where you took the last resort series, with your colour film. What were you setting out to do? Did you have an idea of the kind of images you wanted to capture? Well, I'd seen the images from that generation of American photographers. I'd seen other photographers like Peter Mitchell. So I thought I want to work in colour and also want to work in flash because I don't want to stop photographing at 11 o 'clock and start again at 3 because traditionally photographers like the early morning light and the evening light. So I thought I'm going to work all the way through.

17:28And I went down there, if you like, to contrast the sort of shabby backdrop that was in New Brighton with the fact that the families from Liverpool were still in front of this shabby backdrop. And to contrast, if you like, those two things together, that was my aim. And of course, New Brighton was very full of litter. And I quite liked that. So I would, of course, do most of my work at the end of Sunday after a weekend or bank holiday late afternoon when the litter was at its worst, because I wanted to really emphasise this contrast between this shabby backdrop and the family still going there and having a day out.

18:05Did you already know the beach? Was it a place that you were familiar with? I'd been to New Brighton in the black and white days. I was living in Hebden Bridge and went over to New Brighton. I went to see a show called 23 Photographers at the Walker and in the afternoon I went and photographed in New Brighton. You took a series of photographs of the community in Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire. Those were black and white, though, weren't they? They were. There was a totally different aesthetic for that series. So I went to Manchester Polytechnic, and a few years after I left, together with some other friends of mine, we set out to go and live in Hebden Bridge.

18:38We got a workshop called the Albert Street Workshop, and in there I made a gallery. So as you went into the downstairs shop bit, on the right-hand side there was a wall where I'd pin up my photographs that I'd been taking in and around Hebden Bridge. One of the things I was doing there was catching up on my lost childhood. Remember, I was brought up in Surrey. I immediately thought it was fantastic to go to West Yorkshire, where my grandfather lived, and the sense of community there. So I wanted, if you like, to sort of really photograph and celebrate that sense of community that I found in Hebden Bridge, as well as Calvary near Bradford.

19:11That's why I'm interested in the link, because there's a sense of celebration of a community in those Hebden Bridge photographs. When you go to New Brighton and you already knew it was shabby, you were going to get a totally different kind of aesthetic, were you setting out to celebrate New Brighton in the same way? Or was there a different intention? I think the black and white work was more celebratory. As soon as I started in colour, it became more of a critique of society. And that seemed to me to be the right thing to do. And these pictures were first shown at the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool.

19:45And no one really thought anything about them, insofar that scousers knew what New Brighton was like. But these came down to the serpentine. and then I got a lot of stick for being this middle-class photographer, exploiting the working classes. How dare you? They're very condescending. So it became quite controversial, that set of pictures. ...photographs are controversial. Critics allege he's exploiting his subjects rather than making social commentary. He has already agreed to take two of the photographs out of his current exhibition after complaints from the people in them. We asked Martin Parr to explain how...

20:18It's not my intention to upset people at all, But at the same time, I'm trying to show a downside as well as an upside. I'm actually trying to use photography as honestly as I possibly can. And I think that's something that most is not inherent in photography because it's much easier to hide behind a stereotype. Audrey, as a viewer, did you... Well, there are photographs which, I mean, how should we put it, they gently satirise or they highlight the class tropes. Was that not the intention? It was partly the intention, yes. So, in a sense, I felt vindicated by the fact that people found them, you know, very upsetting.

20:57I know that sounds strange, if you like. But were you upset by the criticism that you were this middle-class bloke going and mocking the working class on holiday? Mocking is not the right word. I'm showing them in front of the shabbiness. So I'm not mocking, I'm just showing it as it is. But that was one of the criticisms, wasn't it? It was, yeah, yeah. But people are entitled to their criticism, and I've attracted a lot of it in my career. and most of the time it hasn't done me any harm. You know, I guess it's better to get the work talked about than ignored. So particularly with the New Brighton debate, I felt quite vindicated that I'd done the right thing.

21:31Looking back at some of those New Brighton images from The Last Resort, just describe a typical image from that series. Well, you've got this picture, I always call it the beach, and there's a big JCB on the right-hand side and it's a concrete sort of slope and there's a woman there sunbathing and there's a baby actually crying. So that would be... And the caterpillar tracks of the bulldozer right in front of them. Exactly, yeah. Behind their heads. So that's the type of picture that I took. What's interesting, though, is I think the book's now been in print ever since then. I think it's on the seventh edition.

22:04And, you know, when I get to the pearly gates and I'm asked, you know, what did you do? Show us one project. I'd have to get the last resort out. So it's strange that my most known work was taken 35 years ago. They are such vivid images. A lot of people will have their own favourites. I'm thinking of the girl who's serving ice cream to the youths who are behind the counter, and she looks like a kind of 1950s film star or something, looking at the camera. One that sticks in my mind. Do you have a favourite? Well, that is indeed one of my favourites. And interestingly, about four years ago, someone called Tracy Marshall arranged an exhibition in New Brighton, and a lot of the people who were in the pictures actually showed up.

22:45The woman who was sunbathing by the JCB, she showed up and said, by the way, that's not my kid. You know, she was absolutely adamant about that. We gave her a photograph. But the one person I've always wanted to show up is the woman in the ice cream parlour, but she never made it. Really? Someone thought they knew what her name was, but, you know, I'd love to give her a print. But, you know, I hadn't found her. What was the reaction of those people who turned up at the exhibition? I think, you know, with the benefit of hindsight, these pictures probably are better because New Brighton has now been gentrified.

23:18The big swimming pool, the Lido, is gone. So you're looking back at another era. And, of course, the great thing is you always meet people who are from Liverpool who went to New Brighton as a kid. And so I have many people write to me or show up, get books signed, and said, you know, this reminds me of my childhood. And what about the woman who came up and said, by the way, that's not my kid? Are you suggesting she meant I hadn't, I was looking, I would have looked after my kid if it had been, but that's not my kid. Exactly, yeah, yeah. But I gave her a print and she was quite happy. The last resort was shown at a prestigious international photography festival in Arles in Provence in 1986.

23:57What impact did that exhibition have on your career? Well, it had a huge impact because I suddenly realised the world of photography in Europe was so much bigger than the UK. I went to the Isle Festival it was shown in 1986 I couldn't believe it here was a whole festival with like 25 exhibitions of photography people sitting around talking about photography there was nothing like it in the UK and it just completely blew my socks off and I thought this is amazing and then of course my career in Europe started to take off you know I sold some prints to some French regional galleries it was shown at the Museum Folkwang in Essam which is one of the great European venues for photography So suddenly I was an international photographer.