Martin Parr
I would urge everyone to start looking at the world in a different way. Spend some time looking at everyday objects, at their design, their shape, their individual characteristics. Think ahead and imagine their significance.Collection: Design
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.Collection: Sad
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.Collection: Romantic
Sepia in particular tends to make everything look a bit romantic and almost sentimental, hence the fact that it remains such a popular choice for wedding photographs.Collection: Wedding
You can easily take photographs at a wedding - no one would question it. But funerals are different.Collection: Wedding
The thing about tourism is that the reality of a place is quite different from the mythology of it.
Wealthy people have not disappeared, they are just not so willing to show off their wealth.
The ability for us to laugh at ourselves is Britain's saving grace.
As we travel around Britain, I am convinced most of us cannot really appreciate what we are seeing. We take too much for granted, because it is all so familiar.
Tourism is the biggest industry in the world.
Fashion pictures show people looking glamorous. Travel pictures show a place looking at its best, nothing to do with the reality. In the cookery pages, the food always looks amazing, right? Most of the pictures we consume are propaganda.
The idea of England in decline is very attractive.
My black-and-white work is more of a celebration, and the color work became more of a critique of society.
I never think of photographs as being individual. Always as a group.
There are elements of irony in my work, of course.
I think the ordinary is a very under-exploited aspect of our lives because it is so familiar.
I just go out and try to make sense of the world around me.
We live in a homogenized world, where it's hard to get excited when everything is slick and professional. The interesting things are the dull things.
If there is any jarring at all in my photographs, it's because we are so used to ingesting pictures of everywhere looking beautiful.
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.
Photography is the simplest thing in the world, but it is incredibly complicated to make it really work.
Margaret Thatcher was very good for the arts in so far as it gave people a real focus for something to be against.
Of course, New Brighton is very shabby, very rundown, but people still go there because it's the place where you take kids out on a Sunday.
Photography is, by its nature, exploitative. It's whether you use this process with a sense of responsibility or not. I feel that I do so. My conscience is clear.
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.
If you go to the supermarket and buy a package of food and look at the photo on the front, the food never looks like that inside, does it? That is a fundamental lie we are sold every day.
When someone says to you, 'Oh, I don't take a good picture,' what they mean is they haven't come to terms with how they look. They take a fine picture, it's just that their image of how they think they look is not in touch with the reality.
Photographers never want to talk about the fact that they may well be in decline. It's the greatest taboo subject of all.
When I am in London, all I do is mix with other people in the arts.
I don't like being flattered. It doesn't suit my English sensibilities. Remember, we are the great country of understatement.
My father was an obsessive bird-watcher. The genes of observation passed down.
I photograph wealth.
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.
Places change all the time, and the type of people who live there change.
In New York, you have the street; in the U.K., we have the beach. I end up being like a migrating bird, being attracted to it.
Taking photos is a form of collecting.
Dictators are interesting, no?
When I visited Vietnam for Oxfam, the thing that really struck me was how the local farmers had to prepare to evacuate or climb to their mezzanines with their valuable family possessions.
I would drown in objects if I didn't have the ability to photograph them.
TV-makers usually don't know much about photography.
One of the things I regret is that magazines now are so lifestyle-orientated that the opportunity to do bigger projects is gone. This is a serious misjudgment on the part of magazine editors.
There are 65 to 70 photography galleries in New York alone. In the U.K., there are no more than five, and they're all in London.
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.
I photograph people as I find them. But people have issues about how they look.
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.
The trouble with Hollywood films is that they always have a pleasant ending.
My profile is bigger in Europe than it is in the U.K.
When I fly British Airways, I can't help but read the free Daily Mail, which makes me glad I am leaving the country.
I avoid Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and if I need to communicate with someone, I email direct.
I am a big fan of Jim Jarmusch, and I do love big screen documentaries.