The beguiling work of English photographer Martin Parr is the subject of this brief, but thoroughly enjoyable study which sets out to introduce his extraordinary work, particularly the fierce brilliance of his colour images in the 70s and 80s celebrating the white working class on holiday.
Parr is an inspired combination of seaside-postcard artist Donald McGill and Alan Bennett, with a bit of American street photographer Vivian Maier, and a sliver of Diane Arbus, although the grotesques in which Arbus specialised are not what Parr has in mind. Everyone here is at pains to emphasise that Parr is never cruel or mocking, and, yes, it’s quite true. But as a real artist, Parr naturally has what Graham Greene called the splinter of ice in his heart. He knows what makes a brilliant image and the person involved is unlikely to find it flattering. (David Walliams is interviewed here, perhaps because of his TV comedy Little Britain, but Little Britain isn’t precisely the same thing either.)
