British photographer Martin Parr dies at 73, studio announces
· France 24“It is with great sadness that we announce that Martin Parr (1952-2025) died yesterday at home in Bristol,” the Martin Parr Foundation studios said in a statement.
While the statement gave no details of the circumstances surrounding his death, the Guardian newspaper reported that Parr had been diagnosed with cancer in May 2021.
He is survived by his wife Susie, his daughter Ellen, his sister Vivien and his grandson George.
“Martin will be greatly missed,” the statement added.
Parr worked for Magnum Photos for many years.
Parr shot to fame in the mid-1980s when he launched The Last Resort, a series of pictures from 1983 to 1985 depicting people enjoying themselves at the seaside resort New Brighton, near Liverpool.
In a February interview with the Guardian’s Miranda Sawyer, Parr said he had always known – already when he was a young boy – that he would become a photographer.
“I knew I would be a photographer from the age of 13, 14, and I knew what was good even then. I was obsessive about photography. All artists are obsessive, I think.”
When asked how to define his style, he said: “It’s the palette of bright colours, and getting in close to your subject matter. The colour helps to take it one step away from reality. I guess that’s a part of my, erm … ‘vision’ sounds a bit pretentious. And humour. Life is funny. I try to bring that into the images.”
Although Parr travelled the globe during his decades-spanning career – snapping images everywhere from North Korea and Albania to Japan and Russia – he spoke of relishing more everyday settings like supermarkets.
He kept working into his 70s, recently releasing his latest book, an autobiographical collection of photographs together with wry commentary called "Utterly Lazy and Inattentive".
The title stemmed from a French teacher's damning school report on him when he was 14.
In an interview with AFP published last month, he argued the world has never been more in need of the kind of satire captured in his images because many people are too wealthy and their lifestyles are unsustainable.
"The state we're all in is appalling," he said in Paris. "We're all too rich. We're consuming all these things in the world. And we can't. It's unsustainable."
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)