Top 40 Martin Parr Quotes

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.

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

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

My profile is bigger in Europe than it is in the U.K.

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

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

I photograph wealth.

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

Photographers never want to talk about the fact that they may well be in decline. It’s the greatest taboo subject of all.

Taking photos is a form of collecting.

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

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.

When someone says to you, ‘Oh, I don’t take a good picture,’ what they mean is they haven’t come to terms with how they look. They take a fine picture, it’s just that their image of how they think they look is not in touch with the reality.

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

I have been photographing people dancing for 20 or 30 years now, and I think I will eventually do a book of dancing photos.

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

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

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

Dictators are interesting, no?

I photograph people as I find them. But people have issues about how they look.

I am kept awake by the list of possibilities for shooting more photos and deciding what I must prioritise next.

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.

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

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

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

TV-makers usually don’t know much about photography.

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.

You can easily take photographs at a wedding – no one would question it. But funerals are different.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

When I am in London, all I do is mix with other people in the arts.

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

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.

Part of the role of photography is to exaggerate, and that is an aspect that I have to puncture. I do that by showing the world as I really find it.

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.