Martin Parr  (British, 1952) 

Martin Parr (British, b.1952) is a photographer and photojournalist known for taking photographs that critically look at various aspects of modern life in provincial England. Parr wanted to become a documentary photographer from the age of 14, and he has said that his grandfather, who was an amateur photographer, was one of the people who influenced him to take up photography. He attended Manchester Polytechnic from 1970 to 1973 to study photography.

Parr taught photography intermittently in the 1970s while working as a professional photographer. When he created Bad Weather (1982) and A Fair Day (1984), he was recognized as a skilled black-and-white photographer, although he switched to color photography in 1984. Parr has been a member of Magnum Photos since 1994. Critics have described Parr's work as intimate, satirical, and anthropological. Parr focuses on his works with a marvelous intensity that many people do not understand. For example, he entered ordinary homes and took photographs of objects and people, combined them with quotes from the subjects, and produced Signs of the Times: A Portrait of the Nation's Tastes (1992).

Parr has produced numerous publications, such as A Fair Day, Promenade Press, UK (1984), Small World, Dewi Lewis Publishing, UK (1995), and Signes des Temps, Textuel, France (2006). Parr is recognized all over the world, and his works are held in collections in diverse places, including Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, UK, Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany, and Yokohama Museum of Art in Japan. Parr has participated in both solo and group exhibitions worldwide. His group exhibitions include Three Perspectives on Photography, at Hayward Gallery, London, England (1979), The Past and Present of Photography, at MOMA, Tokyo, Japan (1990), and European Photography Award 1985-1994, at Kultur Zentrum, Bad Hamburg, Germany (1994). He has also held solo exhibitions, such as Signs of the Time, at Janet Borden, New York, NY (1992) and Small World, at Photographer's Gallery, London, UK (1995). In 2004, the University of Wales (UK) appointed Parr as a professor of photography, and, in the same year, he was also a guest artistic director for Rencontres d'Arles (France). Parr is represented by the Magnum Photo Agency. Parr lives and works in Northern Ireland, UK, where he has been since 1980.