117 Quotes by Martin Parr

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

As artists get wealthier and more famous, often their work gets worse... I'm fascinated by the decline of artists. I suspect I'll be in decline myself. It's a fact of life.

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

I accept that all photography is voyeuristic and exploitative, and obviously I live with my own guilt and conscience. It's part of the test and I don't have a problem with it.

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

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.

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

Photography's central role is to be the absolute medium of the day. It is fantastic that there is no longer any technical intimidation.

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.