Promotional Information

Martin Parr's first major body of work, from the mid- 19 70 s, published in book form for the first time

About the Author

Martin Parr is a key figure in the world of photography, recognized as a brilliant satirist of contemporary life. He has published over seventy photobooks of his photographs, including The Non-Conformists (Aperture, 2013), Black Country Stories (2014), and We Love Britain (2014). His work is also in the collections of museums worldwide, including the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum; and Tate Modern, London. Parr is a member of Magnum Photos. Susie Parr is a writer and researcher, and author of the critically acclaimed The Story of Swimming (2011); she and Martin Parr married in 1980.

Reviews

Beginning in 1975, when he was just out of art school, Martin Parr started a five-year documentary study of a fast-disaperring culture in the Yorkshire mill town of Hebden Bridge, England, and the surrounding areas. He was soon joined by Susie Mitchell, an aspiring writer he'd met as a student in Manchester, and who eventually became his wife. As she explains in the introduction to the book "We started tentatively to document things that seemed to be deeply traditional, or in decline, or both." Nearly 40 years later, Martin Parr has finally compiled the images in a book. His photographs of farmers, mill workers, coal miners, game keepers, shop owners, henpecked husbands and other subjects are interspersed with stories Susie Parr wrote at the time about some of those same people.--David Walker"PDN" (12/01/2013)

This is a lovely and melancholy book.--Luc Sante"The New York Times Book Review" (12/08/2013)

Who knew Parr started his career taking thoughtful black-and-white pictures of small town life in England? "The Non-Conformists" was Parr's first body of work after graduating from art school in 1975. But among the images of sheep grazing, grouse hunting and churchgoing, are glimpses of the humor we now so strongly associate with Parr.--Stacey Baker"The New York Times Magazine" (12/19/2013)