Martin Parr Quotes

I get up early and open my emails, write cheques, and answer the phone; whatever needs to be done.

Of course, New Brighton is very shabby, very rundown, but people still go there because it's the place where you take kids out on a Sunday.

When I visited Vietnam for Oxfam, the thing that really struck me was how the local farmers had to prepare to evacuate or climb to their mezzanines with their valuable family possessions.

You can't learn passion, either you've got it or you haven't.

We live in a homogenized world, where it's hard to get excited when everything is slick and professional. The interesting things are the dull things.

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.

As artists get wealthier and more famous, often their work gets worse ... I'm fascinated by the decline of artists. I suspect I'll be in decline myself. It's a fact of life.

Fashion pictures show people looking glamorous. Travel pictures show a place looking at its best, nothing to do with the reality. In the cookery pages, the food always looks amazing, right? Most of the pictures we consume are propaganda.

In the '70s, in Britain, if you were going to do serious photography, you were obliged to work in black-and-white. Color was the palette of commercial photography and snapshot photography.

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.

One of the things I regret is that magazines now are so lifestyle-orientated that the opportunity to do bigger projects is gone. This is a serious misjudgment on the part of magazine editors.

I am what I photograph.

The danger is, you have a formula and you just repeat it.

The idea of England in decline is very attractive.

The ability for us to laugh at ourselves is Britain's saving grace.

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.

All photography is propaganda.

Sometimes you feel uncomfortable taking a photograph, but that's all part of the job.

Photography's central role is to be the absolute medium of the day. It is fantastic that there is no longer any technical intimidation.

I love curating, because I'm lucky and privileged that I have a platform and I can share my discoveries with other people.

I would urge everyone to start looking at the world in a different way. Spend some time looking at everyday objects, at their design, their shape, their individual characteristics. Think ahead and imagine their significance.

I pride myself in being an aficionado of the British seaside. Throughout my career, I have visited and worked in many of the famous British resorts, from Great Yarmouth to Largs.

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.

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

Margaret Thatcher was very good for the arts in so far as it gave people a real focus for something to be against.

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

When I first started learning how to take photographs, you had to spend the first six months figuring out what an f-stop was. Now you just go and take pictures.

When I fly British Airways, I can't help but read the free Daily Mail, which makes me glad I am leaving the country.

Tourism is the biggest industry in the world.

I think the ordinary is a very under-exploited aspect of our lives because it is so familiar.

I always take photographs when I attend a funeral. Most people there know who I am and expect me to be there with my camera.

I toyed with the notion of being an actor, and am so glad that this whim did not go any further.

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.

Photography is, by its nature, exploitative. It's whether you use this process with a sense of responsibility or not. I feel that I do so. My conscience is clear.

Dictators are interesting, no?

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

You have to take a lot of bad pictures. Dont' be afraid to take bad pictures ... You have to take a lot of bad pictures in order to know when you've got a good one.

As we travel around Britain, I am convinced most of us cannot really appreciate what we are seeing. We take too much for granted, because it is all so familiar.

You can read a lot about a country by looking at its beaches: across cultures, the beach is that rare public space in which all absurdities and quirky national behaviors can be found,

Places change all the time, and the type of people who live there change.

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

Nobody thinks about technical issues anymore because cameras or camera phones take care of that automatically. On the other hand, you still have the option of controlling every technical aspect. It's the most accessible, democratic medium available in the world.

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.

Taking photos is a form of collecting.

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

Modern technology has taken the angst out of achieving the perfect shot. For me, the only thing that counts is the idea behind the image: what you want to see and what you're trying to say. The idea is crucial. You have to think of something you want to say and expand upon it.

Work harder, get closer and be passionate about what you photograph.

Personally, I don't take holidays; I go on trips. My idea of relaxing is taking a trip that isn't commissioned. I'll work just as hard, but without that nagging pressure of fulfilling a commission. Now that's what I call a holiday.

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.

The knack is to find your own inspiration and take it on a journey to create work that is personal and revealing.

I don't like being flattered. It doesn't suit my English sensibilities. Remember, we are the great country of understatement.

Choosing sepia is all to do with trying to make the image look romantic and idealistic. It's sort of a soft version of propaganda.

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

My father was an obsessive bird-watcher. The genes of observation passed down.

In 1982 I bought the newly released Makina Plaubel 55mm fixed-lens camera. With this shift from 35mm to 6 x 7, I also changed from black and white to color. Later that year, I started my project on New Brighton called The Last Resort. However, the first project I shot in colour was composed of urban scenes from Liverpool. This image was on the second roll of film. It's the first good photo I made in this new chapter of my work.

Magnum photographers were meant to go out as a crusade ... to places like famine and war and ... I went out and went round the corner to the local supermarket because this to me is the front line.

Sepia in particular tends to make everything look a bit romantic and almost sentimental, hence the fact that it remains such a popular choice for wedding photographs.

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.

There are two parts to the process: taking the picture and finding ways of using it.

Wealthy people have not disappeared, they are just not so willing to show off their wealth.

The trouble with Hollywood films is that they always have a pleasant ending.

I am away so much, so I rarely see live TV, but I use iPlayer to catch programmes.

I am a big fan of Jim Jarmusch, and I do love big screen documentaries.

I do read many of the photography magazines from the U.K. and abroad.

There are elements of irony in my work, of course.

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

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

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.

I just go out and try to make sense of the world around me.

If you go to the supermarket and buy a package of food and look at the photo on the front, the food never looks like that inside, does it? That is a fundamental lie we are sold every day.

I am not as cross about Thatcher now as I was in the '80s. Begrudgingly, I can see that some of her policies helped modernise Britain.

I am not a huge follower of music and tend to like one CD and play it to death, usually when I am washing up.

The thing about tourism is that the reality of a place is quite different from the mythology of it.