Martin Parr
I love curating, because I'm lucky and privileged that I have a platform and I can share my discoveries with other people.
I am away so much, so I rarely see live TV, but I use iPlayer to catch programmes.
My biggest television weakness is 'Dragons' Den.'
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.
I am kept awake by the list of possibilities for shooting more photos and deciding what I must prioritise next.
I toyed with the notion of being an actor, and am so glad that this whim did not go any further.
I have been photographing people dancing for 20 or 30 years now, and I think I will eventually do a book of dancing photos.
Over the years, I have perfected the art of dancing and photographing at the same time: it's a great double act. If you're dancing, you are joining in. If you stand there rigid, you are not in the flow of things.
I get up early and open my emails, write cheques, and answer the phone; whatever needs to be done.
Most of the photographs people take with their cameraphones are of little value in terms of documentary.
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.Collection: Photography
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.Collection: Order
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.Collection: Games
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.Collection: Moving On
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.Collection: Trying
All photography is propaganda.Collection: Photography
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.Collection: Country
I see things going on before my eyes and I photograph them as they are, without trying to change them. I don't warn people beforehand. That's why I'm a chronicler. I speak about us and I speak about myself.Collection: Eye
I am what I photograph.Collection: Ego
You can't learn passion, either you've got it or you haven't.Collection: Passion
Part of the role of photography is to exaggerate. Most of the photographs in your paper, unless they are hard news, are lies. Fashion pictures show people looking glamorous. Travel pictures show a place looking at its best, nothing to do with the reality... Most of the pictures we consume are propaganda.Collection: Photography
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.Collection: People
My black-and-white work is more of a celebration and the color work became more of a critique of society.Collection: Black And White
Unless it hurts, unless there’s some vulnerability there, I don’t think you’re going to get good photographs.Collection: Hurt
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.Collection: War
I try to photograph my own and society's hypocrisy.Collection: Hypocrisy
Work harder, get closer and be passionate about what you photograph.Collection: Hard Work
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.Collection: Photography
We are drowning in images. Photography is used as a propaganda tool, which serves to sell products and ideas. I use the same approach to show aspects of reality.Collection: Photography
The knack is to find your own inspiration, and take it on a journey to create work that is personal and revealing.Collection: Photography
Nobody thinks about technical issues anymore because cameras or camera phones take care of that automatically. On the other hand, you still have the option of controlling every technical aspect. It's the most accessible, democratic medium available in the world.Collection: Technology
I do read many of the photography magazines from the UK and abroad.Collection: Photography
I am a big fan of Jim Jarmusch and I do love big screen documentaries.Collection: Fans
Color was the palette of commercial photography and snapshot photography.Collection: Photography
I get up early and open my emails, write cheques and answer the phone; whatever needs to be done.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Artist
Photography is Art and Art is Photography.Collection: Photography
When I first started learning how to take photographs, you had to spend the first six months figuring out what an f-stop was. Now you just go and take pictures.Collection: Preparation
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.Collection: Taken
Everyone is a photographer now, remember. That's the great thing about photography.Collection: Photography
The danger is, you have a formula and you just repeat it.Collection: Danger
When a mother takes pictures of her children on the beach, she doesn't take herself for an artist; she does it for love, which is an excellent reason, from my point of view.Collection: Mother
There are two parts to the process: taking the picture and finding ways of using it.Collection: Photography
Photos tend to organize chaos, to define what we're doing here. It is essential that individuals' voices depict the world around us, as we are increasingly controlled by large institutions, large companies and large systems.Collection: Voice
Most of the pictures we consume are propaganda.Collection: Propaganda
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.Collection: People
Photography's central role is to be the absolute medium of the day. It is fantastic that there is no longer any technical intimidation.Collection: Photography
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.Collection: Black And White
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.Collection: Tourists