British photographer Martin Parr died on Saturday at his home in Bristol, in the west of England. A member of the Magnum Photos agency since 1994, he passed away from myeloma, a blood cancer diagnosed in May 2021, although the exact cause of his death has not been specified by his foundation. His passing marks the end of a career spanning more than fifty years, during which he revolutionized documentary photography by infusing it with humor, color, and social commentary.
Born in Surrey on May 23, 1952, Martin Parr was introduced to photography by his passionate grandfather. After studying at the University of Manchester, he began his career in the 1970s in black and white, following in the footsteps of the great masters of the time such as Henri Cartier-Bresson. But he quickly set himself apart by adopting color and a unique style that would become his signature. "Once I tried color, I never looked back," he said in 2022.
He first came to prominence in the mid-1980s with "The Last Resort, " a series of photographs of middle-class vacationers in Brighton, featuring fish and chips, sunburned bathers, and funfairs. This series foreshadowed his future work with its use of flash even outdoors, its close-ups, and its saturated colors inspired by advertising. Sun-kissed bodies, garden parties with hats, industrial food: the photographer transforms the mundane into material for social observation.
"I love and hate England at the same time," he said after Brexit in 2016. This ambivalence runs through all his work. With series such as "Small World," "The Cost of Living," and "Common Sense," he examines mass tourism, consumerism, British society, and its codes with a gaze that is both tender and cruel. His images of tourists trying to hold up the Tower of Pisa or Japanese people crowded onto an artificial beach have been seen around the world.
Paris has often welcomed the British photographer's work. We remember in particular his exhibition on Ireland at the Irish Cultural Center in 2022, his Foodography series at Beaugrenelle in 2018, and the Fashion Faux Parr exhibition on Île Saint-Louis in 2024. More recently, Life's a Beach at the Quai de la Photo in 2023 gave Parisians the opportunity to discover his sharp take on mass tourism.
However, his career was not a linear one. Henri Cartier-Bresson initially opposed his entry into Magnum, before reversing his decision. "We belong to two different solar systems—and why not?" he eventually wrote to Parr. Parr went on to head the prestigious agencyfrom 2013 to 2017, helping to modernize it. The Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation had proposed an exhibition in 2022 to mark the reconciliation between the two artists.
Preferring to capture everyday life rather than frequenting war zones, Martin Parr established himself as a true anthropologist of contemporary society. He published iconic works and founded the Martin Parr Foundation to support contemporary documentary photography. A great collector of unusual objects and photo books, he has an archive of over 50,000 images.
From January 30, 2026, he will be the focus of a retrospective, "Global Warning, " at the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris. This exhibition, scheduled to run until May 24, 2026, will bring together some 180 works spanning more than fifty years of production. It will offer a revisiting of his work from the perspective of the planet's imbalances and the excesses of our lifestyles: the turpitudes of mass tourism, the domination of the car, technological dependencies, and consumerist frenzy.
"We are all too rich and we consume far too much," the photographer observed in an interview in early November, on the occasion of the release of his visual autobiography. This biting lucidity, mixed with humor and social criticism, will continue to inspire future generations of photographers. With Martin Parr, a unique voice has been lost, that of an artist who knew how to transform our most ordinary habits into a social mirror.
