When Martin Parr was 14, a teacher described him in a school report as "utterly lazy and inattentive." The assessment couldn’t have been more wrong, or, perhaps, more telling.
That same year, Parr made a quiet and absolute decision; he would become a photographer. "It’s what I will do for the rest of my life, until I drop dead," he writes. "I knew when I was very young. It was a definite decision. Don’t ask me why. I just knew it was the right thing."
