‘I Am Martin Parr’: A Deeply Humanistic Documentary

A review of ‘I Am Martin Parr’, by Lee Schulman; Haut et Court Doc, 2025.

So at the end of the 1970s Margaret Thatcher came to power in my dear beloved England, and ushered in an age marked by individualism and unbridled capitalism. Some people say the place was so gloomy before she turned up that this was needed; others that she tore the social fabric of our nation. (When she died, ‘Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead’ reached number one in the charts.) But whatever you think, her tenure coincided with an explosion in consumerism, and all its happy side-effects, like greed and obesity. And this evolution — or devolution? At any rate, this transformation—was captured by an eccentric, obsessive photographer called Martin Parr.

Now Martin was always a bit odd, in the best way possible. His wife says the first she met him, he was dancing with a mop. Since he was a child, he loved photographing life as it was, mooching about till some scene caught his eye, and then snapping it. As an adult, he became one of the UK’s best social documentarians, a deeply humanist artist whose affection for ordinary people shines through his work. Unlike other artists, he never cared for life is it ought to be and concerned himself only with life as it was.

Now Martin was always a bit odd, in the best way possible.

His extraordinary career is the subject of I Am Martin Parr, a film that has been largely ignored amid the fuss of the award season. The documentary traces his journey from emerging black-and-white photographer to the very peak of fame and success in his field. Along the way, the captures the changes taking place across British society: the death of historic communities, like the non-conformists in the north of England; the rise in materialism and marketing culture; the appearance of mass tourism; and the individuation of lifestyles. He didn’t try to do this. Just by recording life as it was, he came to throw light on society, and developed a whole new way of seeing in the process. The artist Grayson Perry, one of the talking heads, said Martin’s work had entered the ‘visual unconscious’, so that people would now come upon a scene and think, ‘That looks like a Martin Parr photo.’

These talking heads — artists, curators, fellow photographers, family members, friends — roundly agree that Martin was obsessive, funny and quietly charming. He was able to take photographs of people in part because he noticed them — noticed, for example, the earrings they had made themselves. People were more than willing to pose for him because he noticed and appreciated them, and that appreciation was real. Like Orwell, another great social documentarian, we get the sense that Parr liked to be one of the people, among the people, not studying from a distance let alone from ‘above’. He has been attacked for patronising the working classes, due to his picturing, say, sunburnt people eating chips on a beach in New Brighton. But those who know him say the opposite is true. Martin saw the intrinsic silliness and charm of all people, regardless of class, and his pictures of Tory hustings could be seen as just as unflattering as his photos of people sprawled in the sand in a pair of too-small budgie-smugglers.

He has been attacked for patronising the working classes, due to his picturing, say, sunburnt people eating chips on a beach in New Brighton.

Martin Parr’s photos are bright and saturated with colour, which gives them a vivid, striking quality. The maker of this film, Lee Shulman, shoots his film as much as possible in Parr’s style. The testimonies of the various talking heads help to paint a rich and colourful picture of the man who nonetheless remains mysterious, obsessed by his work and happier walking up and down the seaside, looking up from his zimmer frame to take a photo, than in the pub with his pals. A scene from the day of King Charles’s Coronation in 2023 captures Martin at work: going to road parties and village fêtes, taking photos of people sloshed on cheap wine, or wearing little crowns while eating plastic-looking food off plastic plates with plastic cutlery.

There is something heartening, uplifting, ‘humanistic’ about this film and its subject, who sees people as the paradoxes they are: silly and serious, ugly and beautiful, free and unfree, and, in short, worthy of our respect and patience. By capturing people from every class, from every part of society, what he succeeded and continues to succeed in showing is that, at bottom, we are all basically just the same.