Inspired in his early teens by his grandfather, George Parr FRPS, Martin graduated from Manchester Polytechnic and began work as an in-house photographer in the surreal world of Butlin\u2019s in the early 1970s. With Daniel Meadows, he made \u201cButlin\u2019s by the Sea\u201d and developed a left-leaning perception of \u2018class\u2019, \u2018play\u2019, and social \u2018posing\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This shaped his life\u2019s work on British leisure and taste, saturated colour often augmented by a macro lens and ring flash. The brash, ethically challenging, \u2018as you see it\u2019 style could be controversial, though it didn\u2019t quite prevent his election to the Magnum agency, and surely contributed to the global rise in popularity of street photography in recent times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As his reputation grew, he gave his time, cash, and influence generously. A voracious collector generally, as a photographer he didn\u2019t just make photobooks, he educated the world in the photobook as a form. Much of his 12,000 strong collection went to the Tate in 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That year, he established the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol strengthening his contribution to regional and national photography from there. Many knew it as a drop-in hub – a place to meet, leaf through books, feel part of the wider craft, from fine art to news, zines, and youth work, and often rubbing shoulders with the greats of photography who \u2018just happened to be passing\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Parr died of myeloma cancer at home in Bristol on 6 December 2025, aged 73.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Inspired in his early teens by his grandfather, George Parr FRPS, Martin graduated from Manchester Polytechnic and began work as an in-house photographer in the surreal world of Butlin\u2019s in the early 1970s. With Daniel Meadows, he made \u201cButlin\u2019s by the Sea\u201d and developed a left-leaning perception of \u2018class\u2019, \u2018play\u2019, and social \u2018posing\u2019. This shaped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3088,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-photo-journey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tobelikethis.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tobelikethis.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tobelikethis.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tobelikethis.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tobelikethis.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3087"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tobelikethis.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3090,"href":"https:\/\/tobelikethis.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3087\/revisions\/3090"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tobelikethis.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tobelikethis.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tobelikethis.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tobelikethis.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}