Martin Parr und das Geheimnis guter Fotografie
In diesem Podcast-Interview spricht über das Wesen der Fotografie als Medium des visuellen Geschichtenerzählens und der zwischenmenschlichen Kommunikation. Er kommentiert die Szene der analogen Fotografie, die aktuell einen Hype erlebt.
02.12.2024 55 min
Zusammenfassung & Show Notes
In diesem Podcast-Interview spricht Magnum-Fotograf Martin Parr über das Wesen der Fotografie als Medium des visuellen Geschichtenerzählens und der zwischenmenschlichen Kommunikation.
Er kommentiert die Szene der analogen Fotografie, die aktuell einen Hype erlebt. Sein Rat: Man solle sich auf die Geschichten hinter den Bildern konzentrieren und nicht auf das Medium selbst.
Parr gibt außerdem Einblicke in seine Karriere als Streetfotograf und seine persönlichen Sammelgewohnheiten.
Er kommentiert die Szene der analogen Fotografie, die aktuell einen Hype erlebt. Sein Rat: Man solle sich auf die Geschichten hinter den Bildern konzentrieren und nicht auf das Medium selbst.
Parr gibt außerdem Einblicke in seine Karriere als Streetfotograf und seine persönlichen Sammelgewohnheiten.
Ein weiteres Thema ist die Rolle der "Martin Parr Foundation" bei der Förderung der britischen Dokumentarfotografie.
Last but not least gibt Parr Tipps, wie es gelingt, sich selbst fotografisch auszudrücken und einen unverwechselbaren Stil zu entwickeln. Er betont, wie wichtig es ist, Bilder zu schaffen, die eine dauerhafte Bedeutung haben und über den Moment hinaus wirken.
Das Interview wurde im August 2024 am Rande der Medientage des Festivals "La Gacilly – Baden Photo" gemeinsam mit Ulrike Schumann und Thomas Pöhler vom "Fotopodcast" sowie mit Pia Parolin aufgenommen.
Hier geht es zu den Shownotes mit Bildern und weiteren Informationen:
https://www.abenteuer-reportagefotografie.de/podcast/martin-parr
Last but not least gibt Parr Tipps, wie es gelingt, sich selbst fotografisch auszudrücken und einen unverwechselbaren Stil zu entwickeln. Er betont, wie wichtig es ist, Bilder zu schaffen, die eine dauerhafte Bedeutung haben und über den Moment hinaus wirken.
Das Interview wurde im August 2024 am Rande der Medientage des Festivals "La Gacilly – Baden Photo" gemeinsam mit Ulrike Schumann und Thomas Pöhler vom "Fotopodcast" sowie mit Pia Parolin aufgenommen.
Hier geht es zu den Shownotes mit Bildern und weiteren Informationen:
https://www.abenteuer-reportagefotografie.de/podcast/martin-parr
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// Werbung //
Mit neuem Konzept ist der GATE7-Podcast nun der Podcast der interaktiven Lernplattform “Abenteuer Reportagefotografie”. Hier dreht sich alles um visuelles Storytelling in der Street- und Reportagefotografie.
Thomas B. Jones und ich helfen dir, mit deinen Bildern spannende Geschichten zu erzählen - ob in der Familie, in der Freizeit oder auf Reisen. Lerne, wie du die Bilder machst, die dich und andere begeistern.
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Mit neuem Konzept ist der GATE7-Podcast nun der Podcast der interaktiven Lernplattform “Abenteuer Reportagefotografie”. Hier dreht sich alles um visuelles Storytelling in der Street- und Reportagefotografie.
Thomas B. Jones und ich helfen dir, mit deinen Bildern spannende Geschichten zu erzählen - ob in der Familie, in der Freizeit oder auf Reisen. Lerne, wie du die Bilder machst, die dich und andere begeistern.
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Transkript
I mean, I get so frustrated with people who are still analogue photographers
because they think their work has something special about it because they've done it in film.
You know, so there's a lot of film snobs out there and it's rubbish really because
ultimately, whether you're shooting in film or digital, you've got to be telling a story.
You've got to be telling someone about the connection you've made to the world
out there through your work. Technically, I'm a street photographer occasionally,
but I guess this is a genre that we can all do and most people can't do it.
Hello, dear listeners. Hello from Austria. Hello from Baden.
We are here in the Casino Suite and are very excited.
It has already been a small tradition, that we sit here together,
Ulrike and Thomas from the Photo Podcast, I, Kai, from Gate7 and Pia Parolin
is also with us here in a 4-Route.
Hello everyone. We wait for a very prominent guest.
We have already slept well, or I at least. I don't know if it was about it.
We are already quite excited because a real legend will be here in our room.
Yes, it is Martin Parr. And he has just here in Baden a price,
namely the Lifetime Achievement Award.
Yeah, before us on the table are a lot of bunting postcards.
Kai and Pia are just yesterday and have asked extra a few special postcards.
Yeah, by so a photographer, who has a over five years long career looked at
and has already been so many interviews, It was not so easy to pick them out
with which we will speak with him.
But one thing we found out about the research is that he likes things,
things like all kinds of things, such as postcards.
And we did it yesterday.
What did you think, Pia? Yes, and then we had the whole Städtchen throughstrength
and we had every Laden unsicher where they were sold out and were actually sold out.
So there are actually no cards to sell out.
And there are also very many, very gruesome. And the worst ones for our taste have we then brought.
Genau, die liegen jetzt hier vor uns auf dem Tisch und wenn Martin gleich kommt,
dann werden wir ihn mal bitten, da einen Blick drauf zu werfen,
ob da irgendwas dabei ist, was sein Interesse weckt.
Wir haben nicht deswegen so schrecklich rausgesucht, um ihn zu ärgern,
sondern weil das genau, wahrscheinlich genau seinen Geschmack trifft,
weil er eben kuriose Dinge sammelt.
Und eben bei Postkarten geht es eher um boring, boring Postcards.
Boring Postcards, we have seen yesterday at the event, when the price was given,
there was also mentioned,
he had a book or a book about Postcards made and was in a small town in the
USA, which was also also boring. he's.
Auch großartig. Ja, und dann hoffen wir, dass wir seinen Geschmack finden und
damit das Eis ein bisschen brechen können, weil der hat ja schon,
mehr als genügend Interviews gegeben und deswegen ist es natürlich auch immer
eine Herausforderung da,
ja, das Interesse zu wecken, das Eis zu brechen und eben nicht so ein 0815 Interview
abzuliefern und da haben wir
gestern die Köpfe zusammengeschickt und uns hoffentlich gut vorbereitet.
Yeah, then let's go ahead and surprise what comes out. We wait now on Martin,
wait until it's right on the door and we can go on.
Well good morning hello martin uh thank you
very much for taking the time to sit down with us it's a great
pleasure to to have you here thank you
nice to get to and meet a german
audience is your first podcast in in
german or for german i think it is actually yes i've
done podcasts for strange places but never germany yeah
yeah there are quite a few of you out there what do
you think about the medium because it's uh photography as
a visual medium for photographer to talk i
mean i think the the series that people do on podcasts
with photographers are very good uh we have in the uk
ben smith who's very thorough and i've
done other ones as well so yes i think uh other photographers
want to hear about what photographers have
got to say and also on the um the martin power
foundation a youtube channel we have i think
26 interviews that i've done with photographers
and uh you know we have a lot of people you
know listen to those so it's it's good news yeah
what the listeners can't see is the environment we are here it's uh has it's
called the casino suite and has a little bit of a living room atmosphere martin
if we were able to see your living room or to do this in your living room, what will we be seeing?
Well, we live in a Georgian terrace in Clifton.
And we have a kitchen, calm, sitting room combined. So that's where I spend a lot of my time.
And yeah, you'd see, there used to be a lot more things on the wall,
but my wife took them down.
You had a big cabinet full of very interesting items, but that got moved when I was away one time.
So now it's a bit more refined. So it's looking, I guess, minimalist,
classic sort of middle-class taste.
Excuse me. Yeah, I was going to ask that because you're here with your wife
and you're known to be quite a collector of things.
So you answered that question already.
No, but in the foundation, that's where the cabinet got moved to.
We have things like selling the same watches.
We have watches from Gaddafi. We have space dog ephemera.
For some reason, I'm really mad about that. uh and
all these different rather strange collections all come together and
i cannot quite define why or how i
got into these but uh my collecting gene is
a very strong urge you can't suppress it um we
might add to your collection uh we
heard that you are a big fan of postcards or that postcards are is one thing
that you collect and uh we've been to to baden uh to buy a collection of postcards
to see if there's a postcard that that's to your liking,
i'm offered one or what's going to happen here yeah you you get to choose okay
or comment on them i'll have i'll go yeah i think these it's good to actually
have a bit of the the town oh baden's got a racetrack right yes okay well i
didn't know that you see how much she learned from postcards.
These are still available. Now, you bought these yesterday, did you?
Yeah, just yesterday. Okay, there you go.
So I did another version of boring postcards for Germany. Did you see that?
No, unfortunately not. No. Okay.
If you were there last night, Andrea showed two volumes of boring postcards.
Yeah, I saw that. And she said there were two. In fact, there's three because
the third one is German boring postcards.
And of course, I got to get that. No, but these are far too interesting. Yeah.
I think you can start a collection about
austrian postcards with these you're welcome to keep them
all okay we made an effort yesterday no i'll just
take two i'd be greedy to take them all but thank
you that's that's very kind of you it's actually funny
to walk baden looking for awkward postcards so
we had a lot of fun doing this okay speaking of
collections um what what's the weirdest
uh thing you you you
have in your collection i guess sound of
the same watches is pretty weird okay um i
actually did a catalog of those i showed
them in arl in 2004 and produced a catalog
of of the watches uh so i'm quite
pleased with that and uh i mean now
they're a lot more expensive i used to buy them when they were 50 100 each now
i look occasionally just out of interest and there is nothing under 500 so you
know i wish i bought thousands of them it would be you know why go to gold or
equity markets when you can invest inside of the same watches.
And your your collection it's um does it end up in your living room or do you have a,
separate warehouse warehouse uh no
some of them are in the foundation but not all the collections we
have a storage area as well so most of them are buried deep
into into that but remember me
photographing is a form of collecting as well yeah so uh
you know especially when i think about places like the
united kingdom where of course i'm from and i've done
more photos there than probably anywhere else so yes
uh you know i think i think of it as you know
i'm trying to make an archive about the my time in
in britain or in the united kingdom and collecting
is a big part of that you know i i go to events that
i hadn't gone to before i go to seaside resorts i'd
not visited previously and i keep going enlarging
the collection and this of course will be all part of my legacy great great
and how much does collecting play a role in your photography in the sense that
did did you have this in mind to just keep the moments for yourself before Or
keeping them for humanity?
Well, yeah, I guess, you know, I'm trying to think of a thorough way of collecting
images in this 50-year period that I've been alive and working as a photographer.
So even though I mainly do leisure pursuits, I've also worked in offices, in factories.
There's hardly anything where I haven't been to. So, you know,
this to me is very important.
How does that inform your photography?
Now you mentioned that you've worked in places like that, where I imagine also
lots of the people that you photograph, the middle class people,
to get this understanding of your subject matter.
I mean, I define myself by my relationship through photography to the place
that I'm interested in, which in this case is the United Kingdom.
So, yeah, it's where the two things come together, really.
And that's what photography is all about, you know, is me having the ability
to, you know, show the connection I have to the place that I was born and brought up in.
But, of course, I have photographed, you know, extensively, even in Germany.
You know, I did a commission looking at German gardens.
Kleingarten. That's right. Thank you. I can never pronounce it or remember it.
And I remember, you know, I photographed in Berlin a few times.
But it's not one of the countries where I've done a huge amount of work. It just ticks over.
I remember having a big show in Hanover at the Spectrum Gallery.
And also I did some images in that vicinity to put into that show.
So yes it's i've i've worked
more in places like italy america ireland
than perhaps in germany but it is a place that
i've i've i have photographed it and of course i've photographed things like
people eating sausages you know all the things you expect me to do yeah i went
to octoberfest you know all the classics yeah martin i believe but before you
uh travel or started to travel and to photograph in other places,
you photographed extensively in England and had your subject matter pretty much defined.
You know what you were looking for and then you took it to other.
Is that is that right uh well i worked in black and
white for many years before i changed the color in the early 80s
and for example i i settled in a
town called hepton bridge in the north of england and photographed
around that vicinity there and that was a very thorough exploration of you know
a small community and uh there was a particular valley that i went to photograph
i photographed first the the non-conformist chapel and this was basically uh
where the farmers of the valley would come,
and I went to all the different farms and photographed there.
It's a much more celebratory set of pictures. When I moved to color,
it became more of a critique.
That's one of the big differences between my black and white era and the color
pictures that followed in the 80s.
One more question in that line. Nowadays, it's easier than ever to travel and
to go places and to photograph in foreign places.
Do you think that sometimes photographers tend to look a little bit too far
ahead and ignoring their own backyard and to start better to start where they are?
Well, that's a good question because, I mean, the excitement of going to somewhere
different is always, it means, you know, you get off the plane and you immediately
start to see things differently from what you know in your own home country.
And that I guess in one sense is a you know an inspirational feed-in for the
photographer but you're right I mean there's no harm in photographing where
you're from however boring it is,
in fact the more boring the better in one sense yeah we had the chance oh sorry
we had the chance to meet Tom Wood a couple years ago and in in France where
he had an exhibition and I believe You two know each other very well.
And he's also, he's more than you focused on his own backyard.
I think he had his camera in France, but he wasn't very keen on photographing in France. Yeah.
Excuse me yes i'm a great friend with tom he's he's a brilliant photographer
and i mean one of the things that stops him basically going far afield is he can't drive,
so uh that that's an incentive for him to stay in and photograph uh in and around
his um you know his own uh backyard if you like and he did a brilliant book
with uh about the buses called all zones off peak and this is where he got a
basically a pass to go on any bus he wanted,
and uh he photographed louisville you know through the sort of if you like the eyes of the bus,
occasionally outside the bus but most of the time on the bus looking down and out onto the,
into the you know vernacular streets and he was going through and that produced
a very brilliant book and we also did a lot of pictures in new brighton together
i photographed there and did the book called The Last Resort,
but he also has photographed extensively in New Brighton and did a whole book
about a nightclub looking for love, which is also very good.
And we have many, you know, we have maybe over 500 prints of Tom Wood in the
Martin Parr Foundation collection. So we're big fans.
Would you like to tell us a little bit about the Martin Parr Foundation?
For sure. So it was set up in 2014 and
then in 2017 we managed to get a building uh the
foundation bought this we had it done out we put shelves
up we have a gallery so we opened in 2017 uh
we do four shows a year there and they're predominantly exhibitions about british
photographers especially documentary ones and we have a big library and we have
a membership scheme and we're very lively we have a big book festival called BOP,
which is Books on Photography, which is in October.
Look it up. We have a BOP website. You can look it up on the Martin Parr Foundation.
So yes, it's become quite a sort of hub for photography in Bristol,
which is to the west of London, about 100 miles.
So, you know, 130 kilometers from London.
I have a question because you spoke about being bored.
And did you ever get bored doing what you're doing? And did you look for new
challenges or something?
No, I don't get bored doing what I'm doing because it's always exciting because,
you know, you have this possibility that you might get a good photo.
I mean, every day when you go out shooting, you hope for one of those very rare
icons that do pop up in your life.
But they're very difficult to sort of pin down.
They're very difficult to take. And they are, if you like, a byproduct of your
engagement with a particular subject matter, however boring it is.
And if you can get a good photo in a boring situation, that's all the better.
And probably Homo sapiens has, how do you say, resources without an end.
I mean, you will always find something interesting going on just observing the
others, right? Well, if there's people, then it's always going to be interesting
because they are predictable and unpredictable, strange, weird.
You can tell so much about a person by the way they dress, the way they've turned out.
So, yeah, I would never get bored with photographing people,
even looking around at your lot today.
I think you're a tribe, the podcaster's tribe.
How you define those exactly? I'd have to take the photos to demonstrate to you.
I'm happy you didn't take your camera along then.
Another question that comes to my mind when I think of Martin Parr is the theme of respect.
Would you like to speak a bit just about what you think about respect,
how you have respect as something important or in your photos,
in encountering people?
I mean, I think one of the things, if you're a photographer and you photograph
people, you've got to like people, and I certainly like people.
But in my pictures, there is a sense of mischief because, you know, we're all flawed.
I join everybody else. I have flaws too
and uh you know I guess back in
the days when I did black and white it was easier to think of the
pictures as a celebration but even now
with the sort of the color which often can be
a critique it's not the critique of the individual person
it's our mass behavior because you
know given certain circumstances when we're becoming tourists for
example uh we all do the same thing and
including myself i guess so yeah i respect
my subjects but i'm not going to do propaganda pictures you
know because we're surrounded by propaganda in this world you
know we see you know the fashion pictures in the
magazines we see travel pictures in magazines everything looks perfect
when you see the food in magazines everything's beautiful
uh real life is not like that you know
so we're constantly thrown with sort of lies
if you like if you go into a supermarket and you
walk around and you pick up a packet on the front of
the packet would be a very beautiful photograph when you open it up it has no
relation to that photo on the front whatsoever so we're constantly sold lies
so my job is to counter that and to show it through my own particular vision
which ultimately is respectful but it's mischievous as well.
Yeah, to my mind, it makes really sense to look at your pictures,
knowing a bit more about you, because you really represent the style of your
photography and your personality.
This is what I could understand by listening to you talk or listening to people talk about you.
And I think this is important to be coherent.
You ask yourself about your own personality. You look in your own mirror and
then find these things reflected also in society and then take photos of that.
This is great because you're answering my question. Sorry. So I can just sit back and relax.
Keep going. I had to think about a new question related to that.
No, but I think it's really important that as a photographer,
you transmit authenticity
what do you think about this i guess because most
of the projects that i've done uh you know are things that
i do you know i photograph the middle classes i am middle class you know i photograph
tourists i get on planes i stay in hotels i join the queue you know to do all
these things so yeah i i think many of the things that i do myself are reflected
in the work that I do. So it makes sense to me.
Um,
I think you're really more interested in the flaws and in the quirk,
in the quirkiness, right?
Because you told us about a book you made, The Playas.
And I guess you collected like, I don't know, five proposals and you chose the worst.
That's right. The worst layout, and you appreciate every fault they are doing in the layout.
So it's kind of, yeah, your type of personality.
Where does this interest in the art things come from?
I guess it's intuitive. I mean, you're talking about a book called Playa,
where indeed I went with a Mexican publisher,
and i said to him i want to have a trashy kind of book and that's what inspired
him to take some of my images to design as he knew and that's when we chose
the worst design and then found a very bad printer uh so yeah that was part
of the conceit of that book is to make it as bad as possible.
Uh yeah so it worked in that sense yeah but it's very unusual to to choose the
the worst uh and the most trashiest thing.
So it's really deep in your personality.
I guess it is, yeah. I mean, you know, I'm taking the piss out of myself.
I'm taking the piss out of the world of publishing.
I'm taking the piss out of all those photographers that want the perfect book.
All those photographers that think, you know, when they get a book published,
all their lives are going to change radically.
It's not the case, as you know. You know, most books that come out completely fail.
You know, you get an initial sale to your friends and family,
maybe a hundred, and then underneath your bed and in your attic,
you have 500 copies of a book that no one wants.
So why do these people publish this book? These are probably the kind of people
who are listening to this.
Vanity. They think the world needs their pictures. And most of the time, they don't.
So I'm sorry, all those folks out there.
Please feel free to turn this off.
But I challenge you, is your book really that good? The answer is probably no.
Because maybe, what, 5,000 books a year are published in photography?
And maybe 20 of them are really pretty
good i mean i it takes me this
is terrible thing to admit it takes me about five seconds to work
out if a book is any good you know i flip through i immediately
see some pictures and then i recognize there's the
influence of nan golden there's the influence of wolfgang tillman's
and then it's when i can't work out uh
the heritage of those images that i get
interested i'm then trying to work out what this
photographer is trying to say are they any good have they
got a unique vision of the world and most of the time as i say they don't because
you can read their heritage yeah they just reproduce uh something they they
see and and now we have this new trend street photography you know street photography
festivals everywhere you know so we used to have festivals and now we have street festivals.
And i've been to a few of these and you see the same
kind of pictures recycled some of them are good most of
them are sort of you know poorer versions of people like
matt stewart uh so yeah i'm sure
there's i don't even need to ask if there's a berlin street photography
festival because there's going to be one isn't there yes yes
exactly yeah yeah where do you think where does
that come from this uh interest
in street photography uh well i didn't
i didn't do it you know technically i'm a street photographer occasionally
but uh i i guess this is a genre that
we can all do and most of the people can't
do it from time to time you get a new voice coming
into the street that makes things look different say bruce
gilden eamon doyle i remember when
eamon doyle's book came out that was very funny the title
of which is an exclamation mark do you know this guy no
have you heard of him no he's an irish photographer who
did a brilliant book it must have come out maybe 10
12 years ago this is back in the day when
we had um what's the precursor to instagram
net not net netflix honestly uh flicker
remember flicker yes it's sort of its day has come and gone isn't it so i used
to occasionally write on flicker and i i wrote on flicker this is probably the
best new street photography book i've seen in the last 20 years and uh everyone
bought it immediately and then it sold out.
And then he became a very modern street photographer.
So yeah, check him out. Eamon Doyle from Ireland. I will.
What made it so special in your eyes? You know, I hadn't seen these pictures
before. He photographed people from the back.
Not very promising, but the way he aligned them up with the street and made
them very simplistic, very bold, it just sort of worked. So you knew.
I knew I hadn't seen those pictures before. That's the great thing about it. Yeah.
So you might have just discouraged a lot of people listening to the podcast
and stop doing street photography. That's right.
Maybe this makes the world a better place. It does, because there's a therapy process here.
I mean, also it gives people something to do. I mean, a lot of people don't work.
A lot of people don't have children and they're wondering what to do with their
free time so they become street photographers.
They could be burned out.
Martin do you think it's getting perhaps more difficult
today to be really original to find something new
and sometimes I think you might have
been privileged to have started in the 80s or started even earlier because the
world was not that explored and not that much seen and so you needed a lot of
creativity for sure but was it easier for you at that time than it is for someone starting today?
Obviously, there were less photographers in the 70s when my career really started.
So yeah, and there were less books published. I mean, back in the 70s,
there'd be like 20 books a year that you'd see.
And, you know, you could buy half of them and feel you've got everything covered.
Nowadays, you can't think about buying the photo books that are coming out because there's so many.
But the other thing is now, you know, we have things like Instagram.
And if you're any good and your pictures really do have that vision that we're
talking about, people will find you and through word of mouth,
you'll get a good following on Instagram.
I mean, I talked to someone like Keith from Satanta Books.
He publishes books occasionally. And he says, if anyone's got over 50,000 followers on Instagram,
I'd be interested in publishing their book on the grounds that maybe a quarter
of them or even 10% of them might be interested in buying the book of that particular person.
So yeah, things are very different. You know, previously, we had to go through
the traditional gatekeepers in magazine editors, you know, gallery owners,
but now there are other those still exist. And we still have things like folio reviews.
But now we have other ways of launching a career. So that's exciting in one sense.
And what do you think about the
idea that Instagram brought some kind of democratization of photography?
Yes, no, I agree. All your statements are correct.
I'm sorry. Don't apologize. No, you're absolutely right. Yeah,
it's the democracy of photography. Yeah.
And even with books, you know, anyone can publish a book now.
Previously, you know, you had to have a, but you can get a print on demand books for 50 bucks.
And i mean that's a very good way of working out you know
if your if your work can work in a book
for example we have the famous case of people like
alex soth who made you know an addition of his images from sleeping by the mississippi
gerhard steidl saw this and said i'll publish your book you know and the rest
is history has become one of the best known and most important documentary photographers
in the states so yeah he did it through publishing his own book initially.
Martin you have taught photography as well in workshops and I believe in Belfast that,
university what is it that you think about photography
that can be taught and what is impossible to teach no I mean someone's either
got that magic eye that's going to help them become an interesting photographer
and then you know through the process of teaching you can encourage them to
sort of understand what about their work is working,
what about their work is not working, and build on these. So that's an important process.
So yeah, I think there is something that can be taught in photography,
but you'll see some people just haven't got it.
You know, you can tell if someone's got that sort of bit of magic in their work
that potentially can come and become really strong work.
So that's if in a sense the sort of pleasure of teaching, You can spot this
and encourage them and try and get people to think about their own work and
work out themselves what's working and why it's working. That's the thing you've got to ask.
Why is this picture better than that picture?
What is it about it that makes it work? That's the magic of photography.
And that's how you find and develop a voice within photography.
You, at a very early age, I think around 13, said that you wanted to become
a photographer, influenced by your grandfather.
What was it at that point that made you so sure to make a career out of photography?
I guess just an intuitive feel that this was the right thing for me to do.
I just love the challenge of taking these pictures.
And then I went to study photography at Manchester Polytechnic,
and that gave me a real opportunity to develop my work.
So it's an intuitive feel that I had.
I've got to do this. this is life or death and
i will become a photographer come what may back in
those days because i had no idea how i'd earn a living from
photography and as i mentioned before you know
my early years it was teaching that basically gave
me the income and it's only when i joined magnum and
that was in the late 80s you know 89 something like that
i started to be represented by them and then
became a member finally in 1994 and that
gave me uh you know open access better
access to getting assignments from magazines as
back in the day when magazines had money to actually spend
on photography these days you know everyone now
wants free content you know that's something you have to put up
with uh but we still do try and license
images if we can in magnum but it's uh it's
never easy but who wants to do
something that's easy yeah yeah who does i would
like to touch again the social media um
because i i think i read that um a
couple of years ago you said you you you're not on instagram you don't want
to uh people to follow more than uh or there are enough people following you
without instagram so but you change your mind why is that that's not the case
yes I think I was very slow to pick up on Instagram.
And I thought, you know, rather pompously, I don't need it.
But now, of course, we've now got three quarters of a million followers.
And it's a very important part.
That it plays in uh the foundation and
our bookshop you know so when i have a new book out
and i have done a lot of books there's no doubt about that and
they will they will keep coming because i've got many books
um coming up in the next few years you know the
first place that we tell people about this is
through instagram because if we have that many followers of
course there's going to be people people that are interested so it's very
slow okay also it's a bit slow on changing
to digital you know that happened in 2008 you
know i should have maybe changed a few years earlier but i only
changed when they had the new full frame dslrs and
suddenly the quality of the images got a lot better and now
of course you know i i mean i get so frustrated
with people who are still analog photographers because
they think their work has something special about it because
they've done it in film you know so there's a lot
of film snobs out there and it's rubbish
really because ultimately whether you're shooting in film or digital.
You've got to be telling a story you've got to be telling someone about
the connection you've made to the world out there through your
work and if you're using film
it means you have to basically change film either every
10 shots if it's 6 7 or every 36
if it's 35 mil i put a card and it keeps
going for 500 it's great and um
you know i can especially when i'm photographing things at
night you know photographing parties you know
I've done a lot of pictures of people dancing so my dancing
pictures improved dramatically after I went
to digital because I can work out you know I know that you know the basics I
can look at what's going on I can work out the you know the ISO I need to be
on what shutter speed I need to be on and I can check this by looking at the
back of the camera I can change obviously from you know 400 ISO to 1600 ISO
with just turning one button,
So this has made my ability to photograph things at night a lot better.
So my night photography came on leaps and bounds when I changed to digital. Okay.
Yeah, that's great. Do you have debates about, I mean, also those chemicals,
aren't they horrible? You know, are there a lot of film people in Germany?
Yeah. It's also trending.
As you say, it's often coming with an attitude of snobbism.
And colleges. that's even worse. I can't stand it when these colleges,
you know, have all these dark rooms there.
Because, you know, the moment you leave college, you know, and you're out in
the real world, you know, if you say to a magazine, yes, I'd love to do that
job for you, and you will be paying to process my film and make prints,
they're going to say, well, we've got plenty more people where,
you know, they're just as good who don't do that. So it's crazy that they're teaching.
But of course, colleges are run by analog children.
You know they've made it in the analog world and now
they want to put the you know impose their
sort of uh you know morality about film
onto the other students and it's crazy they shouldn't be doing that great hands
up in germany if you're an analog uh an analog fossil teaching photography in
a college that's the second group of people i've oh my god i'm not gonna this is,
if I go on this at this rate I'll be banned from going to Germany right.
But don't you think it's I mean it's nice in a way to see that,
young people rediscover analog photography
for themselves in the terms that they they
put more effort more time more thought
maybe and the whole process i mean some maybe
do it because they want to be special and something but i
think there's more to it and i know i take the point
really i mean people are rebelling against being digital you know it's like
uh sound systems you know we're all going back to the valve because perhaps
you know the valve transmitters sound better than a digital one but i wouldn't
probably know the difference i'd have to go to someone like tom Wood, who's a, you know,
completely crazy collector of, you know, valve transformers,
you know, he listens to music at his places, it is mind blowing,
you know, it's very good.
And it's the same with film, you know, it's natural for people to rebel against
what they're told to do, such as, you know, forget film and go digital.
So yeah, I can accept it. But I want to see their pictures and see if they're any good.
Well i remember that once i listened to someone
giving a talk and he might have been in his 30s and
he said well we all came to
photography to real photography with a camera through our
cell phones and that's when i realized oops i'm
getting old there is quite a shift
in generations right and what yeah
i mean the other thing is happen is of course
you know our phones are getting so much better i mean
i've got an iphone 15 now which is amazing the
way it can actually see things in the dark that i can't see in the
with my own eyes you know and the quality is
getting better and better you can now shoot on raw on a phone you know and of
course the other great thing about it is you always look less threatening if
you get your phone out people think oh they don't really think much about it
whereas if you get a big dslr out you know people are going to think they'll be very wary of it.
And as you know, there are many people in this world that hate being photographed
and they're going to pounce on you.
They wouldn't do that with a phone. So that's a great advantage.
So maybe in 10 years time, well, I'll be probably dead by then,
but maybe we'll all be using phones and DSLRs will be put in the bin.
And how do you react if someone looks at you or is aggressive against you because
you took their pictures?
Maybe it never happens to you because you know how to do it, but how do you react?
Yeah, I mean, first off, I might say, you know, when they say,
oh, delete that, you know, I'd be very wary to delete it.
Although probably, you know, given the chances, it's not going to be a very
good photo, so I could delete it.
I'll point out to them that they've been photographed 500 times already today.
Uh so yeah you know you do get involved in these weird conversations it happens
to all photographers no one is exempt from that it's an occupational hazard
and it's something you just have to put up with yeah maybe they find themselves
in a martin par book one day and are very proud.
Well people do write in you know and we'll
always send someone a print or a file if it really is
them in the picture if it's a portrait then
i've arranged for them to get a copy of
that portrait anyway uh you know because what happened
interestingly although here i am moaning about
um uh you know the world of c
prints and the analog world but i go through
the computer make a selection and then we
send these high-res files off to a lab in
manchester in fact in the north of england and they then print
on c paper so they're basically you
know chemical prints and send us back the following day
you know the the prints that i and i'll make the
final edit from the print because ultimately the print
is you know going to be my income so i want to see how
it looks as a print more than anything else so yes
and then i can save these pictures i'll do the final edit half of them will
go and i've got a corner in the in the foundation or in our production department
where i've got maybe three quarters of a million images all on 2030 and And
predominantly, they're all sea prints.
So we cannot count on NFT Martin Parr.
Photography is very very complex so there's many
uh phases and processes involved uh
which is the one that you enjoy most making
the photographs or later editing them putting
them together in a book i think making it
being out there you know and having things happening
in front of you that you know could make an interesting photo
you know so that possibility is always there and
you know you've got to try and juggle and make
some order out of the chaos in front of you and when
you go to an event you know that's what happens i go around everywhere i
will look for the corner of something where i think
there's going to be potential and i'll come back to
those you know sort of hot spots that i've identified and you
know then try and you know i've got to try and capture the spirit of
what i see in front of me into an image and that's
a very difficult thing to do it's very easy to turn
up to an event that you're really taken by and just by getting your camera out
and photographing for say three hours you think you've got the the atmosphere
of that place most of the time we haven't so i'm constantly disappointed when
i look through my edit and think you know what happened there i didn't really
capture it but there's always that possibility that you did.
Do you feel, when you've taken a picture, do you feel that it was a good one?
Or is it later looking at them on the screen?
No, I pretty much know when I'm
onto something that is going to be strong enough to make a good picture.
And just occasionally, a picture I hadn't thought that was the case will come
up and be actually quite interesting.
And also, when I go back through my contact prints. So during COVID,
I was looking at some of my contacts that I took in the 80s and found some pictures
there that I, you know, I'm amazed I didn't print that up.
So, yes, I do occasionally go back to the sort of catalog of images that I've
got, go to the contacts and find different images that need to be printed.
I'm sorry just to follow up on that uh i find that very interesting that you
said that there are some images that you at the at the time when you took them
you didn't realize that they had the potential what was it that later on when
you looked at them with a couple years of,
time that i think it's things like the clothes they're
wearing the positions they're in you know how they look you know
how they look in the picture all these things you
know so what might be a very boring picture now you know
think of people in supermarkets you know we would
never normally think that would be an interesting place to take pictures but
when i look back on my supermarket pictures in the 80s uh you
know i can see the whole way in which the supermarkets laid
out has changed so yeah that's that's
the sort of thing and the clothes that people wear that's the
sort of thing that become more interesting as time goes by are your mobile phone
serious yes that's right yep yep i mean phones with aerials and well you heard
me talk you know about things like selfie sticks they've come and they've gone
so i'm glad i captured them when they were at their peak,
and i saw you were out photographing here in baden did you catch something you
find really it's unlikely you know i just brought my camera with me and i took
a few pictures yesterday but.
There'll be no more than pictures that go into the archive there's
nothing there that's going to be any good basically they're all
failures but you know there is a value in a
documentary failure because it's showing you what the place is like so um you
know the the pool i don't know if you've been to the lido here that's pretty
interesting but you know it's difficult to wander around there and photograph
all the kids are playing and everything so it's not something that i think would be particularly easy,
because if you did that these days you get into trouble.
Whereas when I did The Last Resort in the early 80s, I could photograph kids
playing without anyone bothering me at all.
So things have changed in terms of getting access and photographing,
especially places like beaches.
Coming back to your foundation one more time, it's manifold that it's about
your own pictures, to archive your own pictures.
And the other side is to foster British documentary photography and also to
help emerging photographers get going and develop their art.
Can you elaborate a little bit on the foundation and its goals? Okay.
Well, I guess its goal is to give a platform to the very underrated other British
documentary photographers. I've been very lucky.
I've been able to make a good living, but many of them really haven't.
And they're very good. So it's a great chance for me to purchase their work,
put it in our collection, and also to give them shows, exhibitions.
Also it's great to you know do a show
for an emerging photographer and to suddenly
get and a book to come out at the same time to get
the publicity that deserves so yeah a lot
of people do write in to us and i try and
answer everything but you know i can't be a service to
sort of be you know critiquing all the people that
come to me with their work although occasionally
maybe once a year i'll i'll do some open reviews
and encourage people when we literally sell slots members
get priority but yeah all the people out there you
should come for example we have a big book festival in
october this year it's on the 19th and 20th of october uh we have a trent park
exhibition up trent's doing a talk you know i don't know if you know him yeah
so he's a very famous photographer a very brilliant photographer so we're doing
a show with him because every two New Year's is the Bristol Photo Festival as well.
So we have many shows. We have a big retrospective of Rinko Kawachi at the Arnolfini,
the biggest gallery in the center of Bristol.
So it's a very exciting time to come and to look at, we have 60 publishers coming.
We have photographers selling their own books from a table.
We have 10 talks going on.
It's a big weekend for us. So I encourage your readership. No, that's wrong, isn't it?
Your listenership. Yeah. to come to Bristol in October. Books on Photography. We call it Bob.
Bob has a website as well. Okay, we'll link to that.
I would like to ask you about the young people.
As far as I understood, you also teach, you're giving talks,
so you kind of motivate them.
What are the messages that you pass on to young people?
Well, I guess I do do talks. I gave a talk here on Thursday night.
And many people come up to me and say, oh, that was great. It was very inspiring,
which is very nice to hear.
So, yeah, I do teach at Belfast. so
I go over maybe once a year and give crits to
some of the students there and occasionally on the you know
occasionally on the foundation the Martin
Power Foundation we offer free crits no paid
crits to other photographers they show me their work
and I give a review but I don't want you to think
that they can all write to me with their work because I wouldn't be able to
deal with it so yeah I get many requests that I can't really fulfill because
i've got too many other things on that i've got to do but if you were to give
a recommendation to someone who wants to get more into serious documentary well i mean then,
sorry i think there are things on the internet like uh you know me giving tutorials
it's it's there i think lessons for martin there's lots of stuff on the internet
where i'm talking about um you know how to go forward as a photographer it's all there.
You said that you see in many photographers their influences and they are trying
to copy another photographer.
It has happened to you as well. I think there are many street photographers
out there trying to be a little bit like you.
How do you feel about that when you see pictures that were inspired by your
style and your subject matter?
I do come across that sort of imagery from time to time, especially color and flash.
You know because that's something that i played a lot with in the 80s uh
that's probably become my strongest palette so yeah
a lot of people use that that's not to say uh you know
that using flash and color uh it means
that you're automatically assumed to be a martin park clone no there are many
different ways of using it at different ways of applying it to the work that
you see uh so yeah it's um but you know if you don't learn from the people that
have come before you, you know, it's going to be a big problem.
So you've got to really, you know, study the form in contemporary work,
and understand why and how the great photographers of our generation have made good work.
And remember to think in 50 years time, we'll be looking back,
I won't be here, you might be hanging on.
And we'll think at all those 50, you know, the 50 years and the great photographers.
So all those great photographers have yet to be discovered, and yet to be,
you know, find the voice within their own work to make it happen and for their
work to get the strong vision that we all need.
So it's important to look at other photographers' work, but then to distance
yourself from them at some point?
Well, yeah, I mean, there's no harm in using, you know, other people and copying
it in the first instance and then trying to grow your own vision out of that.
So, yeah, I'm encouraging people, if you like, to copy the ones that you like
and then grow in a different way out of that.
How did that happen in your case when you shifted from black and white to your color photography,
and has that was
that a consequence of your uh or giving
the right aesthetics to your subject matter
with these garish colors with uh well i
i was copying uh you know the the palette of commercial
photography but also i was encouraged by the fact that
in the late 70s we began to see you know
photography shows in color in big
museums in america we think of you know ergolster and
stephen shaw that whole generation of color photographers suddenly
being recognized and lauded because they were working color
previously uh there's always this bias against color where it was associated
with commercial photography which is exactly what i actually chose to copy uh
so yeah it's um you know these things are out there to distract you but then
you grow out of it and find your own voice, if you can.
As I've mentioned, most of you lot will fail to do that.
Do you still grow as a photographer? Well, I hope so in the sense that I don't
want to rest on my laurels, but it is a bit depressing because ultimately the
work that people want from me is The Last Resort, which I shot over 40 years ago.
The book keeps on selling, so I'm trying to do new things and experiment you
know i've played around with the telephoto lens and what that can do and did
a whole book on that called beach therapy uh so yeah i try and think of things
that are slightly different uh so i don't want to just copy what i've done in
the past because that's too easy,
But I'm also looking at my legacy and, you know, I have all these shows to come
to and attend and, you know, like here coming to here, which is very nice. So I get distracted.
But the summer is my main shooting time. so i've done a lot of shooting this
summer already uh which i'm about to sort of finally edit and look at and see
if there's anything any good or whether it'll go into the sort of documentary,
but no great picture uh column which is pretty big in my case.
At the foundation there's uh people working with
you and uh um i think uh yeah
you producing such a great amount
of work you need also outside help to to
deal with all the processes around it can you
describe a little bit how many people are involved you're working with so there
are three people uh that work for me so first a fantastic woman called charlotte
she looks after all my print sales she looks after all my exhibitions and then
i have two people mike and louis in the production department.
They're scanning the negs from if we're looking at old negatives,
processing the files, making prints, you know, preparing the prints for different
exhibitions, preparing prints for print sales.
And then so there's three of us that are directly working for my business.
And then there's eight people working for the foundation.
And I mean, the great thing is, I've got to pay them a salary every month.
So I've got to keep selling prints and keep doing fashion work to subsidize
that but you know i'm very happy to do it it's great,
it's great to have this opportunity you know i've done very well
in photography a lot of my colleagues in british photography
haven't done as well so it's a great way of supporting them and giving them
a platform for their fantastic work yeah you you can look back on a great career
more than five decades of photography is there anything looking back that you
wish you would have done differently?
Well, I do remember the day that the statue was pushed into the harbour in Bristol
of this slave-owning guy called Colston.
And I was at the march that same day, and it then started to go through the city.
So I thought, well, I've done this now, I'll go back. And then,
of course, an hour later, I see on the news that the statue...
So I literally missed that by five minutes.
So yeah, I do have these things that get me completely annoyed because I missed
it but you know the think of the things that i've missed over the years is much
bigger than the things i've actually got but you know you've got to move on
you can't bear grudges against that,
yeah like you said this there might be a great picture just around the corner
another one so well this is this is it or different events that i could have
gone to no i i miss a lot of things but you know i also the law of averages
will help you if you're out there enough uh then you're going to get some things as well,
Has the Queen been a Martin Parr fan? I don't think so.
I mean, I did photograph her quite a lot, but I got a famous picture of her
getting in her chauffeur-driven car.
And of course, she's one of the few people in the world who can actually photograph
from behind, and you'll know who it is.
So yeah,
I didn't really have much communication with the Queen.
Is there this is probably a question you get asked a lot but uh and difficult
to answer but among all your pictures is there uh are there one or two that
that stick out for you personally well again i'd come back to the last resort
you know they're probably my most famous pictures,
and therefore a few from that series would would be in that category yeah,
okay to end this on a maybe more positive note then you've discouraged a lot of people.
Quitting photography um what would
you say why does it still make sense these days to to start with photography
and to pick up photography well first off it is such an important medium these
days because we we still need photos when we look at back at world events It's
always the photos that we remember more than the actual film, for example.
But also it gives you a chance as a creative person to go out there,
you know, if you like, make a connection to the world out there and to basically
stamp your own voice on that.
Because given the fact that there's so many of us all trying to do the same
thing, this ultimate creative challenge that we have to express ourselves through
photography and the potential of that to get something interesting is still
a very attractive proposition.
So, you know, get out there and shoot and try to find your own voice.
And, you know, happy shooting is what I say to your audience.
Be creative and, you know, prove to you all the other people that you've got what it takes.
Thank you. Great. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you. It was a pleasure.
Music.