British photographer Martin Parr has died aged 73. Famous for his iconic and colorful images of everyday scenes, including UK beaches, he died after being diagnosed with cancer in 2021.
Parr has been a member of the Magnum agency since 1994 and has received several awards, including the Photo España prize in 2006, and some of his most iconic images can be visited in museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York or the National Portrait Gallery in London, among others. Additionally, in 2017 he launched the Martin Parr Foundation to promote the work of emerging British artists.
Since the 1980s, his considerable body of work, imbued with irony, has been fundamental to the development of contemporary photography. Parr has depicted scenes in different countries other than the United Kingdom, such as in Spain, where he himself explained a few years ago that with his images he was looking for “reactions, not to change mentalities or attitudes”, which is why he used humor.
His photographs, saturated in color, tell the story of the most “kitsch” part of society, sometimes through comedy, but also show less comical realities: consumerism, mass tourism or superficiality are some of the brushstrokes that we find in his portraits.
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