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I Am Martin Parr (2024)

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I Am Martin Parr (2024)

Post by bunniefuu »

Martin's very unassuming.

Brilliantly ordinary.

One of the most iconic

British photographers of all time.

It's shocking.

People love it or they hate it.

But you always have

a reaction to it.

It's exciting, immediate.

He's just sh**ting,

sh**ting, sh**ting.

It's this choreography of life that

he brings together in a single moment.

There are so many

different levels to his work

than something just beautiful.

It's a trademark.

He did what Charlie Chaplin

was doing in silent movies.

Comedy and tragedy.

No one did it in photography.

You do it his way

or it's the highway.

He's changed the way we look.

I guess getting close

is part of my approach.

And sometimes I pull back.

It just depends on the situation.

There aren't really those rules,

but generally speaking

I'm in the midst of things.

It's the only way to survive,

to sort of put together components

in some kind of interesting form.

Extraordinarily,

lots of people don't notice him.

He's so tall,

he usually has a big camera

and he just hangs around in places.

And people sort of just

don't seem to notice him.

He waits for things to appear.

I think I took my first photo

of my father on a frozen stream

in the very cold winter of 1963.

I wanted to record this idea

of him standing on the ice.

A few years later, I went to Yorkshire

and met my grandfather

who was a very keen photographer.

We went out sh**ting,

processed film, made prints.

The excitement I felt seeing

the pictures come out in the dev

was fantastic.

People believe\i

the more interesting birds\i

are found only in remote places.\i

Yet, with a little encouragement,\i

many birds will come\i

to our yards\i

and gardens.\i

My parents are very keen

bird watchers.

My father was obsessed

and he passed it on to my mother.

I got my obsessive genes from him.

Our trips out would be to places

like Peckham Harbour

to look for waders.

He would put up nets

and birds would fly in.

He'd ring them

and then collect the data.

Of course, it was all about

migratory habits of birds.

By the age of 13 or 14,

I wanted to be a photographer.

Nothing else was gonna happen.

Everybody was out

photographing the English.

But Martin was one of the best ones,

even at that point

of his photographic career.

He was good. You could tell

the difference, at least I can,

when someone has it

and when someone...

is doing the same kind of work

but it's not there, it's not as good.

Martin was one that I would

have crossed off on the list

saying,

look for this one, he's good.

I personally have a massive passion

for the black and white work.

In there, the essence is that

removed nature of looking at people

but still really embedded

to what he sees

and to the visual of the person.

It's all there in the picture.

"I'm looking at you, I'm embedded

in what you're thinking

but I'm staying back

in the distance."

That's the essence of what makes

a Martin Parr picture a picture.

It was more reflective,

more serious,

sort of social documentary,

photographing the chapel communities

and the farming communities.

At that point, he was very...

It was black and white

sort of humanist photography.

In the beginning, he was

very much socially engaged.

We can see by his work

that he is not

a cynical person at all.

His interest

for the social aspects

can be seen more clearly

in his black and white photos.

In his black and white work,

there is a series of abandoned

Morris Minor cars in Ireland.

Following his obsession

with these abandoned cars,

we realise that

they're not just cars,

but cars that were

economically accessible

to the Irish and English

working class for many years.

And with the decline

of the working class in the 70's,

they were left abandoned.

He is already questioning

"what should I photograph and why?"

And "where do I go from here?"

For me,

the black and white work

is the starting point of his legacy.

When you look at the stories

in the black and white images,

if you put them into colour,

they almost would be

like the colour images now.

But it's interesting seeing

his work in black and white

because it completely takes away

what a lot of people know Martin for,

but you can really see that humour

or those excentricities.

It takes a certain kind

of 21-year-old

to be able to go into those spaces,

especially in the 70s and the 80s.

I went to Manchester Polytechnic

and there I met lots of artist friends

and we decided it would be

quite nice to try and move

to a small town in Yorkshire.

What I found most intriguing

was the nonconformist chapels

of which there were many in the area.

I went round to them all

and decided to hone in

on Crimsworth Dean

methodist chapel.

The big event is the anniversary,

the birthday of the chapel.

Then they have two services

and in between time, they serve

a chapel tea. That's something

I photographed extensively.

That to me

was the best event of the year.

I guess I was celebrating the sense

of community Hebden Bridge had.

- I'll show you upstairs.

- Okay.

What's the difference

between baptist and methodist?

You've got me there.

Apart from the fact that

one's baptist and one's methodist.

Good answer!

I remember, this picture

was up in the workshop

in Hebden Bridge.

We used to give people pictures.

Someone wanted to buy a copy,

"but only the bottom half because

I don't know the people on top".

So I had half a photograph extra.

I gave him the whole thing of course.

I look back to the black and white

work with great affection.

I've photographed in black and white

for nearly fifteen years.

It was a great part

of the learning curve.

In the 70s, a serious photographer

had to work in black and white.

Colour was the domain of commercial,

snapshot photography.

It is only in the late 60s

that colour photography

began being taken seriously.

If you look at

his black and white work

after you are solid

in knowing his colour work,

you come to appreciate

not only his early work better,

but also the value

of black and white altogether.

Because it was traditional,

but it's the black and white

that allows

that Martin Parr genius to surface.

And when it surfaces

through black and white,

you get another kick, because

it's not sometning that you expect.

The image of the guy

standing on a ladder

with one foot in the void

is perfect.

He was really, really young,

but he already had a vision,

he already knew what to do.

Stop smiling. Serious portrait.

And now, here's Ozzie.\i

I'd like to show you\i

a new idea in picture taking.\i

A fine 35 millimeter camera\i

by Kodak,\i

called the Automatic 35.\i

It lets you take beautiful colour\i

slides with the right exposure\i

time after time, automatically.\i

Just as your own eyes\i

adjust to changing light,\i

the Kodak Automatic 35 camera\i

with its electric eye meter\i

measures the light\i

and adjusts itself.\i

I'd moved to Ireland in the 80s

for a couple of years.

When I came back,

I decided to go to colour.

Just down the road

was New Brighton.

There was this new camera

called a Plaubel,

it's a 6x7 camera, very easy to use.

I basically changed to colour

and never looked back.

I like seaside resorts because

I wasn't taken to them as a kid.

I've used the beach

as my experimental lab.

When I moved to colour,

it was more of a critique of society.

You're looking for the individual

pictures, but ultimately

you're trying to create a narrative

about what's going on there.

That to me is very much documentary.

It's very difficult

to create a photographic icon.

You can't predict

how and when they'll happen.

They just do happen sometimes.

When you see something

that's very exciting,

very moving, that's the time

when you might get

one of these great pictures.

You're constantly searching for them

and they remain elusive.

But that's what keeps me

being a photographer.

If I only had to go out

and do it automatically,

why would I be interested

in doing it?

That's the challenge.

There's no such thing

as a perfect picture.

Everyday you hope to get one,

but most of the time you don't.

But you have to believe

every morning, before you go out,

that this could be the day

when something happens.

Your job in the first instance

is to record what you see.

You feel the excitement

of what's going on

and very rarely do you get

that same excitement

translated into the image.

That's the skill,

and that's difficult.

In the early 80's, Martin Parr

produces his first colour work.

Colour was the domain of fashion,

it had just arrived

in documentary,

but not in fine art photography.

So Martin's work

was a huge turning point.

He said: "I am

a middle class photographer,

I want to record society

as it is."

When I saw those first pictures

from The Last Resort,\i

it just... For me,

it was incredibly real.

It was how he shot the world

and not how you wanted

the world to be.

That's a really important point.

He was sh**ting

and he just captured that world.

And I understood it completely.

There had been some jibes about how

he was maybe being condescending

to the working class,

but I didn't see that at all.

Coming from a working class

background, I think

he was just putting the camera

in front of people and captured it.

The choice of the title

"The Last Resort" is a real statement.

It's not just photographs

of holiday makers.

It marks the end

of the working class

in the Thatcher years.

The architecture of his images

is very complex,

yet he managed to deliver

a very clear, pure statement.

Concise,

without a word more,

without an image less,

without one colour more,

without one element less.

- Can we do a picture of them all?

- Yes.

Great. Fantastic.

You make them or you buy them?

Buy them.

Amazing.

You just stand here.

That's great.

Can I do one of you

being serious as well?

Not miserable, just serious.

Just normal. Normal face, yeah?

OK, that's great.

Brilliant, thank you.

I've enjoyed photographing people

and meeting them.

They're crazy, unpredictable,

always interesting.

I like to try and understand

what people are like

just by looking at them.

Clothes, attitude, how they speak.

This is all very entertaining

and very interesting for me.

My main aim is to try

and create an archive

about the time I've lived in Britain.

That in a sense will be my legacy.

Martin Parr became a member\i

of Magnum en 1988.\i

I accompanied him\i

while he was taking photographs\i

for his exhibition and book\i

"Common Sense".\i

It took me a long time

to become a member of Magnum.

Many Magnum photographers

didn't want me to join,

so I had to go through some meetings

where I was rejected.

It's always been a close thing

that I would get enough votes

to become a member.

But I knew it was

the right thing to join

in order to get strong distribution

of the work.

I'm a populist at heart

and I thought that Magnum

offered the best means

of distribution for my pictures.

The objections

to me being a member

was that I was too cynical

and not fitting

into the tradition of humanism

that Magnum's famous for.

Is that purple?

- Yeah, that's purple.

- Right.

When he applied

to the Magnum agency,

half of the Magnum

photographers said:

"If he becomes a member,

we are out!"

And the other half said:

"If he doesn't join, we're has-beens

and we are leaving!"

It's that snobbery.

I think we're akin in that

we both battled to a certain extent

against snobbery

within the culture business.

Which is all down to class

and overintellectualization.

Photography suffers

terribly from academe,

that sort of philosophical waffle.

The view that we look at his work

was regarded at the time,

and Cartier-Bresson found it,

he was an alien...

We've not quite caught up

to how he's taking photographs today.

He's ahead of his time.

Don't be shy!

That's it, got it.

That's brilliant!

With paint as well.

Thanks a lot. Bye.

Snazzy.

Martin shows people as they are.

He just captures the world as it is.

I think people tend to project

their own interpretation and feelings

on those images.

When you see him photograph,

there's no way that you could

call him cruel or anything like that.

Because he's totally involved

in who he is photographing

and who he's trying to capture.

He's really good at saying, like:

"I like your shirt", "I love your hat"

and things like that.

And that really does

make people feel at ease

and it allows him to photograph

people in the way he does.

I like your bag.

Oh no, I want a photograph now!

- Do you?

- Yes.

- I made them myself.

- Did you?

In the beginning of his career,

people said:

"You can't photograph

people like this,

you can't do colour,

you can't use a flash..."

It must have motivated him

to go against the status quo,

and today he doesn't care

about the rules and conventions

of photography.

There's some politics in my work,

but I'm not telling people what it is.

They can discover it

if they want to.

My main project

is the leisure pursuits

of the Western world

within all classes.

Working class

like New Brighton\i

and middle class

like The Cost of Living.\i

I'm looking at people's leisure time,

that's my main subject.

I'm never in a situation

where I wouldn't point a camera

because I don't go to wars,

I don't go and see the world's huge

droughts that we're experiencing.

It's unlikely there would be a place

where I wouldn't take a picture.

I mean, if I a saw a car crash

and someone was dead, I wouldn't.

I love Britain, of course.

We all love the country we come from.

Part of my role is,

if you like, to define

my relationship to being British

and being here.

In a sense I'm trying to show

the yin and yang of British society

and to show it as I find it

as opposed to some idea

of it being romantic or good or bad,

to try to show both things.

One of the good things is that

we have a good sense of humour.

All I'm doing is seeing the things

that I think are interesting,

sometimes funny. People are funny.

So how can the work not be funny

at some point in their production?

But I don't think of myself

as a humorous photographer.

Naturally, life is strange

and life is funny.

Hi there.

May I do a quick portrait?

Brilliant. Thank you very much.

You look great.

Martin's photographs are defined

by their humour and their humanity.

And he's got

a great sense of the absurd.

Humour is so important and underrated.

Culture is biased

againt humour, and yet humour

is what keeps it in check.

There's so much of what I call

performative seriousness in art,

where people think

that misery is somehow

more important in art

than humour.

Humour is what keeps pomposity

and sort of...

unchecked belief.

This man's got a very good

sense of humour,

a needle-sharp eye

for the material culture of our times.

He would laser beam

on the particular food,

the particular garment or make-up.

And that tells a story

about where we are now.

Being able to be funny

is not a cheap gift.

And for him especially,

he's got to find real things

that are funny.

His eyes have got to make it funny.

Why two people enjoying a picnic

outside their car next to a road?

It's funny, isn't it?

It's sort of funny.

But also, you love the subjects too.

A lot of humour is seen as cruel

but I never think

Martin's photographs are cruel.

I just think they're celebrating

eccentricity in all its forms.

Normally, when people

want to capture Britain, it's like

a bridge in London

and the Houses of Parliament behind.

They want certain images

that are quite clichd

that tell the story

'this is Britain'.

But Martin doesn't do that,

he finds some little

sort of garden plates.

I don't think anyone had ever

photographed like that before.

Anywhere he would find

something interesting to photograph.

Of course the signature

of a brilliant photographer is that

wherever he is, he'll find

something interesting.

You can see the responsibility

on my shoulders, right?

Thank you. I've abdicated the throne!

- King Charles!

- Charles!

King Martin the first, please.

- Martin!

- King Martin!

I think it's just a reflection

of society in the UK.

That's what it's

quintessentially about.

You feel the same experience, I think.

There's definitely a place for humour,

particularly when it comes to

the subjects he was photographing

and some of the ideas

about British class.

Britain, even to this day,

is still going on about class

and there are still

kind of class divisions, in its way.

We have a class system

par excellence, \ihere in this country.

And whether we know it or not,

the middle classes are finely attuned

to the gradations of status

within material culture.

Still to this day,

I open the Times newspaper

and there's the supplement

and it's always got

a woman with swooshy hair.

Which is that kind of generic

West London posh.

Always that woman on the front.

Of course, there's that great

Martin Parr photograph

taken at a conservative party event.

And there's a woman

swooshing her hair in just that way.

And I've always associated that...

It's implanted in me.

There's something

about that sort of wholesome,

sort of blandness of the posh.

Brilliant, thank you.

We are gathered

to offer worship and praise

to our mighty God,

to celebrate the life of our nations,

to pray for Charles, our king.

To recognize and to give thanks

for his life of service

to this nation, the realms

and the Commonwealth.

Thank you very much.

Brilliant, thank you.

- Not smiling?

- Hold the flag up.

Yeah, that's good

I'm gonna do a vertical.

- Would you like some glitter?

- Yeah, down here.

- But do it on this side.

- Which is your best side?

Oh, great! Right.

Should we have a picture?

We should have a picture together.

- Who's taking it?

- I don't know. I'm not going to.

I don't think my pictures

are that nasty or harsh.

There's always an element of that,

but what I'm trying to do

is to reflect what I find

in a very subjective way,

and turn it into photographs.

Martin is unique,

he is very free-minded.

He doesn't care about dress sense.

He wears different socks,

an old pair of sandals,

an old jumper...

He's kind of generically ordinary.

And I think that's his camo.

A nature photographer is in camo

so as to not disturb the animals.

That what he is, so he has

to be internationally bland.

The thing is, he's starting to look

anachronistic a little bit

because he's older now.

His idea of bland

is probably out of date.

Yeah, his job

is to blend into the background

and sidle up to things and go...

Flying at more\i

than 300 miles an hour,\i

the Viscount brings Gibraltar\i

within 4 hours\i

of London,\i

and the families to the holiday\i

they've long dreamed about.\i

He became kind of well known with

New Brighton\i and The Last Resort.\i

And then he was off

flying around the world,

going to festivals

and travelling to take photos.

Martin can't swim

but he does love the seaside

and he loves sort of tourist resorts

and things like that.

So we've compromised:

we go to places where I can swim

and he can take photographs.

That works incredibly well.

I'm still excited by seeing

this crazy world that we live in.

Every place I go to,

there is something interesting

that immediately makes me

want to photograph it.

Sometimes people judge

Martin's photos on face value.

As the years went by,

his focus turned to the rise

of global tourism,

which was then ignored.

He was probably the first

to deal with this subject.

He started with the UK

and moved on

to the whole western world.

I remember photographing

on the ferries from France to the UK

when people buy duty free.

And you get these crazy scenes

of people grabbing beer. It's nuts.

I'm happy with those situations

where consumerism goes out of control.

Among other things, I'm trying

to capture how things have changed

with the rise of the hypermarket,

the supermarket.

If you buy a package,

there's always a picture of the food.

But when you open it up,

it looks completely different.

That, I think, shows the basic lie

that we're all being told.

You could argue

that our greed

for all the consumables

is gonna be partly responsible

for global climate warming,

this sort of stuff.

I'm aware of things like this,

and I'm glad my photographs

introduce these topics,

albeit very subtly.

The appearance of food\i

can make the difference\i

to one's appetite.\i

Similarly, its presentation\i

shouldn't be overlooked.\i

You see? Nothing to it.\i

You never know what you can do\i

until you try. Famous last words.\i

Interestingly, junk food

makes better pictures.

I photograph posh food as well,

but it looks like something

out of a magazine.

These days of course,

everyone's photographing food.

In posh restaurants, people

are photographing every course.

At least I was ahead

of that movement.

I can retire from food photography

knowing that the general public

have taken it on.

This is the point about Martin Parr.

He doesn't photograph food

because of the food itself.

He photographs food

as a commentary

on consumerism,

on fast-food,

on tastes,

on the state of healthy living.

It's a crude commentary,

which I think no one really does.

There's something majestic

about seeing

what we normally think of

as very ugly

in a kind of...

I wouldn't say romanticized

but beautiful way.

Beautiful or ugly?

It looks pretty,

but when you get closer it's...

rather revolting.

Maybe he gets

closer than you should

or would.

That's what he wants to show,

that is the message.

"This is just like you,

"this is like us,

this is life as it is

"and not how you want it to be."

The reality of what it is,

that kind of disconnect

between the mythology

and the reality.

He's getting closer

and closer to what

the need of the subject is,

and then exploiting it completely.

Nice wasp

on some cheap strawberry jam.

You can see it's cheap.

It's got no fruits in it.

Here's one from the States,

on the beach.

These are images

from the Common Sense \iproject

which happened in 1999,

where all the close ups I'd taken

in the UK and in Europe

came together into this project.

A phone card in the ashtray.

The ashtray is very neat,

if you know what I mean.

Hot-dog.

"Get it here".

I like that message.

That's a good clichd one.

This is in France.

Cherries in the drink...

with of course the nails

echoing the cherries.

I like the closeups from this period,

I was doing it almost exclusively.

These are sort of battered

cans of food

in a food remaindered shop.

These are actual sardines.

They look quite tasty,

I'd have those today.

See how things are passed on.

I like the out-of-focus

asparagus here

and the Brussels sprouts

clearly overcooked,

probably from Susie's father.

While he was taking pictures

of food here

or people on holiday here and there,

other photographers that

seemed serious, including me,

were travelling around of the world

and tried to be the heroes

and the heroines,

the messengers of freedom

while really, truly, the battles

could have been fought here.

And should have been fought here,

like Martin Parr did.

For me, Martin Parr is a soldier

on that respect.

It's a bumpy ride.

He's obsessed.

The collections, oh my God...

The whole house

was taken over with all kinds

of crap... well, I say crap.

His beloved S*ddam Hussein watches

or statues of...

Lenin or...

You know, the whole house was filled.

Luckily now

we've got the foundation.

I've got my house back,

my kitchen back.

We had a massive cabinet

in the kitchen

that dominated the whole space.

That's all gone now,

back to the foundation.

It's found its home.

Oh God, yeah,

he's just a massive collector.

Photography fits very well

because a big part of photography

is kind of collecting

every country, every event...

You know, that's what he does.

He said: "I've got all

of these British ceremonies,

I've got to get them all ticked off."

And then, he'll have to have

every S*ddam Hussein watch

or every roll

of Barack Obama toilet paper,

whatever it is that he wants.

You have to be obsessed

to be a successful artist

or a successful anything, really.

Of course I'm obsessed.

That's what drives you on.

Depending on the project, he will

invent a new photographic language.

He is not repeating himself.

Upon photographing the fatigue

of Japanese workers

on the subway, he will decide

on a photographic style

and design

and he will stick with it.

I love when he says:

"I don't go on holiday

"because my work is me

"having a good time, being relaxing."

And it's wonderful,

that's a great work ethic...

Having a work ethic that is

encompassing of just enjoying life

and taking part in life.

He's the most hard working person

because he's so driven

and obsessive...

He's always working, you know?

He's had to slow down

because he's been ill.

But before that, he was constantly

on a plane somewhere and...

I mean, he racks up the miles.

He's a very hard worker.

Even in hospital, he was doing

still lives of the food.

In intensive care,

the first sign that he was better...

I went in to see him

and he started

taking photos of the medical team!

So I knew

he was on the mend.

You appreciate the ability to photograph

even more after cancer.

That's one thing

that really sobers you up.

It makes you realize

the basic things, your family,

things you took for granted

are so much more appreciated

in the post cancer world.

It's been a real motivation

for me to do more work.

They're great.

You're all going to be serious

for a minute. Normal faces.

One, two, three, cheese!

One, two, three!

Okay. Nice.

That's it, you can

take the dog again.

No, just hold it out.

Yeah, that's good.

Bring the dog down a bit,

so we can see its face.

One, two, three, cheesy pancakes!

- One, two, three.

- Cheesy pancakes!

You all hold hands now, okay?

That's good.

That's good, nice one.

We have it.

Where's woof woof?

Who's that?

What does this creature

make noises like?

One, two, three.

Okay, we can get higher than that.

The role of the fondation

is very simple: to give a platform

to other documentary photographers,

'cause they're

very underrated in the UK.

For me, this is going

to be part of my legacy.

Not only have I got my own images

of my time in Britain,

but also the collection

that we've built up to really help

to champion the achievements

of other British photographers.

Let me have a look.

Can you put these back?

The Last Resort.\i

Here we go.

Those are the contacts

I did in black and white.

If you look here...

I couldn't afford

to get colour ones done.

Obviously, they were taken in colour.

I wanted them in colour.

But you can make the edit

from the black and white contacts.

It's what I did. So there's that one

which is quite well known.

When we had the show in 2018

or 2019, in New Brighton,

this woman showed up

and kept saying: "This is not my kid,

it was someone else's."

She was looking after him briefly.

And this guy wrote to me

about ten years ago.

I sent his mother a print.

That's her.

There it is in black and white.

Splat the rat.

Mash the mouse.

This is nice, but they're not

dressed in Union Jack.

Just a little limp Union Jack there.

This is nice.

I might put that one in.

This is Charles the 1st

and here's a kid writing with chalk

on the pavement.

In front of the JCB.

"Come join us!"

There's the bar...

in Stourbridge.

Oh yeah, so that's the one

of the three of them together.

Looking deadly serious.

Crowns on.

So that's a good one.

Guys, sorry about this,

could you do a print of this?

- Yeah, okay.

- Just one.

Didn't think much of it.

Hi Susie, come up

and have a cup of tea with me.

Yeah, I think it's tea time.

Let's have a look at this.

It's good. I like the suburban

street, I like the flags here.

I like these three guys.

"God save".

That's quite a good print.

Even though I say it myself.

During the coronation,

someone tweeted: "Oh, look,

it's national Martin Parr day!"

Everything, even on the TV,

looked like a Martin Parr photograph.

The enriched colour of it all,

and the kind of ridiculousness

of the pomp, and all that.

And I think that when we see people

queuing for an ice cream van now,

we think it looks like

a Martin Parr photograph.

He has inveigled his way

into our visual unconscious now.

That is the mark of a true genius.

He's had such a strong vision

and he's able

to technically convey that

over such a vast

sort of oeuvre.

He's made a way of seeing,

which not any people get to do.

One of the reasons that

Martin's work can be controversial

is that he makes us, or asks us

to look at what we try to negate.

When try to say, 'oh no,

it's always beautiful...'

Martin's work is actually

showing us the contrary,

that it's not always beautiful,

and that's okay.

That life is not always

picturesque and beautiful.

Or perhaps that maybe we need

to redefine our notion of beauty.

He's from a middle-class

white background, he's male.

You know... And in the world

of documentary photography,

in British documentary photography,

that set of people

are well represented.

And he knows that Britain

is not just that,

that there are other voices

that aren't represented.

So at the time,

he was really seeking

to get other people

a seat at the table,

to invite them in

to be part of the conversation.

I hope he'll also

be remembered as a humorist

and a satirist. There's satire

in those photographs.

I think he's a satirist.

Because he's reflecting

what's going on

at the time in the country

or wherever he is.

Just signed or...?

Here you go.

Here you go. Thank you.

Hi there.

Exhibitions and books

are important.

They're a great way of displaying

prints, having a good look at them.

The trouble is,

exhibitions come and go

while books stay.

So the book

is the most brilliant way

of getting a photographer's

message across.

Wherever you want.

- Oh my God, on the egg.

- On the egg, yeah.

It's difficult to determine

what makes a good book.

But basically,

you need good pictures.

I know, yeah!

Of course I do, yeah.

And the design should be reflected

in the purpose of the book

and why it's there

in the first place.

Do we have it?

Looks like a Martin Parr photo!

Sultana? Wow!

They're dried grapes in English.

I've never met a Sultana before,

you're my very first.

People don't throw books away.

I've done 120 books.

I'm not gonna tell you

that they're all good.

There are some dodgy ones

in there too.

I've never done that one before.

Very nice. Thank you.

It's amazing, especially

when I go to France,

how many people come up to me

saying they like my work.

It's amazingly flattering, really.

Who doesn't enjoy attention?

Most of the time of course,

no one's bothering me at all.

I go to the supermarket shopping.

It's not like being

a TV superstar, they must be harassed

every time they go anywhere.

I'd hate that to happen.

I have to confess,

I'm pretty obsessed with work.

Everyday I think about it.

So yes, it's taken over my life.

And I'm lucky to have

a supportive partner

like Susie, I think

we make quite a good team.

He was at art college.

He wasn't very prepossessing,

I have to say.

He had a sort of little wispy beard

and wore a Butlin's jacket.

And he was

dancing with a mop

when I first met him at a party.

Martin dances as crazily

as he photographs.

His view of friendship

is rather strange.

Martin is not very talkative.

To understand

if you're his friend or not,

you have to be patient.

But he's very loyal.

He has many different sides.

In fact, he's quite mysterious.

And he doesn't mess about.

He will exchange a few words,

"Hi, how you doing? OK, I gotta go."

He doesn't waste in small talk.

And this is fundamental,

especially when taking pictures.

But in general,

he doesn't do small talk.

He goes straight.

To be frank,

I don't know how he did it all.

That's a great ending.

Because he did so much,

Superman can't even do that.

It's like this insatiable need.

And that's why he's good

at what he does.