A biography for Martin Parrhasn’t been written yet.
“I like to keep in touch with younger photographers. It's important that a younger generation comes up and questions the assumptions made by old farts like me.”
“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.”
“I don't like being flattered. It doesn't suit my English sensibilities. Remember, we are the great country of understatement.”
“I am away so much, so I rarely see live TV, but I use iPlayer to catch programmes.”
“I am kept awake by the list of possibilities for shooting more photos and deciding what I must prioritise next.”
“The thing about tourism is that the reality of a place is quite different from the mythology of it.”
“I photograph wealth.”
“Photography is the simplest thing in the world, but it is incredibly complicated to make it really work.”
“Most of us, when we go out with a camera in our own country, try to find exotic subject matter to photograph.”
“I have been photographing people dancing for 20 or 30 years now, and I think I will eventually do a book of dancing photos.”
“You can't shoot in sepia, so converting into black and white and then into brown makes everything feel less real.”
“In the '70s, in Britain, if you were going to do serious photography, you were obliged to work in black-and-white. Color was the palette of commercial photography and snapshot photography.”