Martin Parr
[Photographer, b. 1952, Epson, Surrey, England, lives in Bristol and London, England.]
When a mother takes pictures of her children on the beach, she doesn’t take herself for an artist; she does it for love, which is an excellent reason, from my point of view.
Find something you are passionate about and shoot your way through this obsession with elegance and you will have a potentially great project.
Photos tend to organize chaos, to define what we're doing here. It is essential that individuals’ voices depict the world around us, as we are increasingly controlled by large institutions, large companies and large systems.
How can we prevent our journey from becoming so broad and ponderous?... I’m just hoping we can keep the spirit of the humble postcard in mind while looking at people, places and things.
I looked around at what my colleagues were doing, and asked myself, “What relationship has it with what’s going on?” I found there was a great distortion of contemporary life. Photographers were interested only in certain things. A visually interesting place, people who were either very rich or very poor, and nostalgia.
It is part of my agenda to take photos that can fit into all the outlets for photography, from the gallery wall to the magazine or newspaper page. That, to me, is using photography at its best.
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 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.
