We’re thrilled to be kicking off this Season’s visual arts strand with a live, in-person, Q&A with one of the UK’s most highly-regarded photographers, Martin Parr.
Since the 1970s, English photographerMartinParrhas held up a sometimes tender, sometimes critical and always mischievous mirror to our times, forcing us to take a hard look at how consumer society has shaped our lives. Discover the maverick behind some of the mosticonicimages of the past century on anintimate and exclusive road trip across England with the uncompromisingParr, whose subjects, frames and colours have revolutionised contemporary photography.
One of the most controversial photographers of his time, MartinParr’s images often have the power to both amuse and leave us ever so slightly uncomfortable, caught between laughter and the uneasy recognition of ourselves in his uncompromising portrait of consumer society.
Though he’s now celebrated, collected and exhibited worldwide,Parr’s early work did not find an easy public and was highly criticized for trivializing the working class. Yet, in retrospect, perhaps he was just observing what we often overlook – forcing it into the spotlight as an essential topic of discussion. I Am Martin Parr is the definitive portrait of an extraordinary photographer who revolutionized contemporary photography by inventing a political, humanist and accessible photographic language
“Eschewing what (Grayson) Perry describes as the ‘performative seriousness’ of Parr’s peers, the photographer’s needle-sharp eye captures, celebrates, and arguably critiques Britain’s eccentricities, and the wider world’s consumerist excesses, without exaggerating or exploiting them, and Shulman’s film repays him in kindness.” – Time Out
Starring:
Martin Parr
Directed By:
Lee Shulman
Running time:
67 mins