Quotes by
Martin Parr

I go straight in very close to people and I do that because it's the only way you can get the picture. You go right up to them. Even now, I don't find it easy. I don't announce it. I pretend to be focusing elsewhere. If you take someone's photograph it is very difficult not to look at them just after. But it's the one thing that gives the game away. I don't try and hide what I'm doing - that would be folly.

All photography is propaganda.

If you photograph for a long time, you get to understand such things as body language. I often do not look at people I photograph, especially afterwards. Also when I want a photo, I become somewhat fearless, and this helps a lot. There will always be someone who objects to being photographed, and when this happens you move on.

Photography is the simplest thing in the world, but it is incredibly complicated to make it really work.

If there is any jarring at all in my photographs, it's because we are so used to ingesting pictures of everywhere looking beautiful.

By default, I am a travel photographer. I work on a combination of commissions and personal projects that take me around the world.

You can't shoot in sepia, so converting into black and white and then into brown makes everything feel less real.

Over the years, I have perfected the art of dancing and photographing at the same time: it's a great double act. If you're dancing, you are joining in. If you stand there rigid, you are not in the flow of things.

My black-and-white work is more of a celebration, and the color work became more of a critique of society.

I never think of photographs as being individual. Always as a group.

We live in a difficult but inspiring world, and there is so much out there that I want to record.

For those aspiring to make a living from travel photography, it's a sad fact that the boring shots are the shots that are going to make you money.

Most of the photographs people take with their cameraphones are of little value in terms of documentary.

I would drown in objects if I didn't have the ability to photograph them.

Criticism is hypocrisy; society is hypocrisy. I'm a tourist. I'm a consumer. I do the things that I photograph and can be criticized of.

There are 65 to 70 photography galleries in New York alone. In the U.K., there are no more than five, and they're all in London.

Most of us, when we go out with a camera in our own country, try to find exotic subject matter to photograph.

I like to keep in touch with younger photographers. It's important that a younger generation comes up and questions the assumptions made by old farts like me.

I photograph wealth.

l truly believe that the ordinary is much more interesting than people make out.

A lot of my colleagues are attracted to war. But I'm drawn by the local supermarket round the corner, because I want to show the reality there. I don't want only the Third World to be documented, but also the First World.

Having a camera around your neck gives you a good excuse to be nosy.

I often think of what I photograph as a soap opera, where I am waiting for the right cast to fall into place.

I am only photographing what is obvious, and part of my way of working is to tap into people’s prejudices, and depict all aspects of things happening in today’s society. I give people an opportunity to air their prejudices, and if they want to say the working class is scruffy and dirty, then the pictures exist to illustrate that thesis.

I see things going on before my eyes and I photograph them as they are, without trying to change them. I don’t warn people beforehand. That’s why I’m a chronicler. I speak about us and I speak about myself.

Get out there and do it. If it’s good it will be seen. There is no such thing as a brilliant new contemporary photographer who is undiscovered.

I try to photograph my own and society’s hypocrisy.

We are drowning in images. Photography is used as a propaganda tool, which serves to sell products and ideas. I use the same approach to show aspects of reality.

Everyone is a photographer now, remember. That’s the great thing about photography.

Find something you are passionate about and shoot your way through this obsession with elegance and you will have a potentially great project.

... I accept that all photography is voyeuristic and exploitative, and obviously I live with my own guilt and conscience. It’s part of the test and I don’t have a problem with it.

The easy bit is picking up a camera and pointing and shooting. But then you have to decide what it is you’re trying to say and express.

..I’m creating entertainment, which has a serious message if you want to read into it but I don’t expect to change anyone’s mind — I’m just showing them what they think they may know already. I’m in the entertaining business! The great strength of photography is that it’s high and low culture at the same time. So you can have a picture on the wall of a very fine museum like the Tate or Museum of Modern Art, but you can also have it printed very cheaply in a zine and hand it out for free. The fact that photography goes across all these genres is one of its wonderful strengths!

I went for an interview at colleges in Manchester and Derby and I was enormously impressed by people doing these creative photography courses. I was impressed by people smoking in the darkroom—the idea of having your own darkroom and being able to smoke in it, I just thought was absolutely fantastic.

The mindset you require is stamina, discipline, and just sheer hard work.

I like humour. We learn a lot by listening to standup comics. The vulnerability they often express has an overlap with the vulnerability I’m looking for in my own work. The world is funny, let’s face it, and people are funny.

I think the mindset you require is stamina, discipline, and just sheer hard work. There are basically very few shortcuts. You’ve either got that ability to apply yourself to a given situation or a given idea and explore it and resolve it, or you haven’t. Most people are just lazy. The danger with photography is that it looks very easy but in fact, it’s a very difficult medium to really excel well in because basically, people don’t work hard enough – they’re lazy. Don’t be lazy!

I like making books, it’s ultimately [...] the most satisfactory way of getting a body of work out because it’s contained, it has a narrative, it has a beginning and [an end] and it’s a physical thing so, even though we are in the day of the internet, the book still really sings out as being the ultimate statement for a photographer. [...] It’s a very good way of seeing how good your pictures are; do they actually hold up and keep someone’s attention for the 50-100 pictures that you need to constitute a book? I would suggest we all make books to see and really appraise how good or bad we are.

With photography, I like to create fiction out of reality. I try and do this by taking society’s natural prejudice and giving this a twist.

I like the idea of making the final selection of the images from prints rather than on the screen because if there are two or three shots of the same subject, I can put them all together to determine which one works best. And also, I think it’s much more unforgiving to see [a photograph] as a print rather than on a screen because you can really see how good or bad a picture is.