Martin Parr Quotes

You have to take a lot of bad pictures. Dont' be afraid to take bad pictures... You have to take a lot of bad pictures in order to know when you've got a good one.

I never think of photographs as being individual. Always as a group.

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

I looked around at what my colleagues were doing, and asked myself, 'What relationship has it with what's going on?' I found there was a great distortion of contemporary life. Photographers were interested only in certain things. A visually interesting place, people who were either very rich or very poor, and nostalgia.

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

To ask people's permission to take their pictures? Sometimes it feels right to ask, but I will not ask, unless it is essential to do so. If you asked all the time, you would miss everything. With the exception of portraits, it is generally bad news if people are looking at the camera.

I avoid Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and if I need to communicate with someone, I email direct.

From the moment the tourist enters the site, everyone has to be photographed in front of every feature of note.... The photographic record of the visit has almost destroyed the very notion of actually looking.

In 1982 I bought the newly released Makina Plaubel 55mm fixed-lens camera. With this shift from 35mm to 6 x 7, I also changed from black and white to color. Later that year, I started my project on New Brighton called The Last Resort. However, the first project I shot in colour was composed of urban scenes from Liverpool. This image was on the second roll of film. It's the first good photo I made in this new chapter of my work.

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

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

Criticism is hypocrisy; society is hypocrisy. I'm a tourist. I'm a consumer. I do the things that I photograph and can be criticized of.

The easy bit is picking up a camera and pointing and shooting. But then you have to decide what it is you’re trying to say and express.

For those aspiring to make a living from travel photography, it's a sad fact that the boring shots are the shots that are going to make you money.

Tourism is the biggest industry in the world.

Magnum photographers were meant to go out as a crusade ... to places like famine and war and ... I went out and went round the corner to the local supermarket because this to me is the front line.

Choosing sepia is all to do with trying to make the image look romantic and idealistic. It's sort of a soft version of propaganda.

Color was the palette of commercial photography and snapshot photography.

Filming is always a challenge because I'm not used to it. But I approach it head-on. I'm not technically brilliant, but it's the spirit that counts.

All photography is propaganda.

I always take photographs when I attend a funeral. Most people there know who I am and expect me to be there with my camera.

I am not a huge follower of music and tend to like one CD and play it to death, usually when I am washing up.

With photography, I like to create a fiction out of reality. I try and do this by taking society's natural prejudice and giving this a twist.

Unless it hurts, unless there’s some vulnerability there, I don’t think you’re going to get good photographs.

I am not as cross about Thatcher now as I was in the 80s. Begrudgingly, I can see that some of her policies helped modernise Britain.

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

Most of the photographs people take with their cameraphones are of little value in terms of documentary.

You can read a lot about a country by looking at its beaches: across cultures, the beach is that rare public space in which all absurdities and quirky national behaviors can be found.

Photographs are interpretations of reality; as such, it is entirely subjective. Most photos are taken with an agenda, to sell something or to make a subject look better than it really is. Think of family snapshots - everyone is smiling and happy.

I am a big fan of Jim Jarmusch and I do love big screen documentaries.

The knack is to find your own inspiration, and take it on a journey to create work that is personal and revealing.

If you photograph for a long time, you get to understand such things as body language. I often do not look at people I photograph, especially afterwards. Also when I want a photo, I become somewhat fearless, and this helps a lot. There will always be someone who objects to being photographed, and when this happens you move on.

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

Photography is the simplest thing in the world, but it is incredibly complicated to make it really work.

Most of the pictures we consume are propaganda.

Photography is Art and Art is Photography.

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

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

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

Taking photos is a form of collecting.

Wealthy people have not disappeared, they are just not so willing to show off their wealth.

I go straight in very close to people and I do that because it's the only way you can get the picture. You go right up to them. Even now, I don't find it easy. I don't announce it. I pretend to be focusing elsewhere. If you take someone's photograph it is very difficult not to look at them just after. But it's the one thing that gives the game away. I don't try and hide what I'm doing - that would be folly.

Dictators are interesting, no?

You can't learn passion, either you've got it or you haven't.

My black-and-white work is more of a celebration and the color work became more of a critique of society.