‘He made the mundane wonderful’: Martin Parr could create a chip shop with the power of a cathedral | Martin Barr

MArtin Parr looked like a “bird watcher,” according to his editor, Wendy Jones. His appearance is so unassuming that he told me during a recent public talk that while he was taking photos during a recent coastal excursion, some passers-by noticed that he “looked a bit like Martin Parr.” Unfazed by the glitz and glamor, Parr deliberately pursued for more than five decades the most boring things he could find—he made no apologies for the excitement he saw in a perfect cup of tea, a plate of beans on toast, or a woman filling her car at a gas station. He also knew that over time, these supposedly boring things would become interesting.

Parr enjoyed looking, without flattering, at things you thought you already knew. In a bar photo, beauty isn’t always graceful – overflowing rubbish on New Brighton Beach, cucumber and cheese sandwiches wrapped in cling film at a Chalfleet church celebration (with the sign, Please Take One Cherry Tomato). He made the mundane wonderful with his skill with saturated colors and striking compositions. He was a master at capturing the unexpected, undesigned interruptions that reveal the unvarnished truth of the ordinary moment. He understood that the fluorescent glow from a chip shop could be as revealing as a cathedral; And the color of the plastic beach bucket can prove the mood of the entire nation; The way a stranger holds up a sandwich or ice cream speaks of class, of longing, of place, of the little stories that plague us or plague us on a daily basis. It is this radical concern – this celebration of the neglected – that makes Parr one of the most humane photographers of our time.

Parr lived an ordinary early life, taking family trips to the local sanitation works where they enjoyed the local history and scenery — and the occasional ice cream treat. He was not academically successful at school but discovered photography early on, and by his final year at Manchester Polytechnic, he was already doing things differently – his last show was an installation recreating a living room. It divided opinions among those who watched it, but was exemplary of Barr’s innovative and original approach to the medium. He wanted everyone to feel at home in and with his pictures.

Naturally, he didn’t always get it right, and he received both criticism and praise over the years. Barr’s acceptance by the prestigious photography agency Magnum in 1994 was controversial, since many of the old guard, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, disliked his style and less serious attitude towards documentary photography. It was accepted, rejected, and finally accepted by a single vote for Magnum, all on the same day. In 2014, he became head of the agency. Parr knew how ridiculous life’s contradictions are and through his photographs he gave us a way to embrace them.

Barr will be fondly remembered for his sense of humor. The quintessential British photographer poked fun at Britishness, which is perhaps one of the reasons his photographs became so popular in France. Some saw his work, especially his decades of images of working-class leisure activities, as satire, but it came from a place of deep love and tenderness for the nation’s unique and exotic culture and vanishing traditions. Although he traveled to places ranging from Benidorm to Mexico City, and from Dakar to Moscow and Pyongyang, he knew and understood Britain best. He showed the British a society that was unambiguously theirs.

Barr’s dedication to photography was unwavering. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of photography – he published 100 books of his own and donated part of his amazing collection of more than 12,000 photobooks to the Tate in 2017. But he was keenly focused on the future generation, too. In 2014, he founded the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol to support British photographers. Opened in 2017, the public gallery space and library has showcased early-career artists, including René Matich, Sebastian Bruno and Turner Prize nominee Ian Weldon, along with era-defining image-makers such as Lee Miller, Ajamu X and Chris Killip. His influence across generations after him is indelible.

Parr loved to travel and take photographs, and was present at almost every photography exhibition and event. After his cancer diagnosis in 2021, he walked supported by a rolling machine – I once saw him playfully throw it against a wall, shouting “crash” with great relish. He took photography seriously – he really believed in it – but despite his success, he never took himself too seriously. His ongoing series of gently mocking self-portraits is just one example of this.

Barr gravitated toward fun, toward leisure and luxury, toward things that were ineradicable human desires—our petty vanities, our simple pleasures, our unguarded absurdities. Like an anthropologist armed with Kodachrome, he entered into the social rituals that shape us, and of which he too was a part: the queues, the holidays, the celebrations, the markets, the deep-seated longings we carry into every public space. He did not hold these things at arm’s length. He was also there, with the humility, with the curiosity of someone who never ceases to surprise the world.