Martin Parr

While the history of photography is a well-established canon, much less critical attention has been directed at the phenomenon of the photobook, which for many photographers is perhaps the most significant vehicle for the display of their work and the communication of their vision to a mass audience. In the second of two volumes, both co-edited by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, the history of the photobook is brought fully up to date. This volume covers company photobooks, artists' photobooks, photobooks that have been compiled by editors (rather than photographers), as well as the most recent photobooks, which chronicle contemporary life. This study provides an important corrective to the traditional history of photography. The selection of photographers made by Badger and Parr challenges the popular canon, and their survey of the history of the photobook reveals a secret web of influence and interrelationships between photographers and photographic movements around the world. The book is divided into a series of thematic chapters, each featuring a general introductory text providing background information and highlighting the dominant political and artistic influences on the photobook in the period, followed by more detailed discussion of the individual photobooks. The chapter texts are followed by spreads and images from over 200 books, which provide the central means of telling the history of the photobook. Chosen by Parr and Badger, these illustrations show the most artistically and culturally important photobooks in three dimensions, with the cover or jacket and a selection of spreads from the book shown.

Martin Parr's work has established him as one of the most successful and popular contemporary photographers. He is best-known for his colour work beginning in the mid-1980s, which demonstrates his acute observation and wit in chronicling social contexts, to produce a colour-saturated world of mass culture and consumerism. Parr has also made a number of influential photobooks on his work, including The Last Resort (1986), Common Sense (1999), Think of England (2000) and Boring Postcards (2000), and is himself an avid collector and a world authority on the photobook, co-authoring The Photobook: A History volume I (2004) and volume II (2006) with Gerry Badger. He has been the subject of numerous exhibitions including a major travelling retrospective that originated at the Barbican Art Gallery in London in 2002. An active member of the prestigious photoagency Magnum Photos since 1994, Parr has also worked in fashion and commercial photography, and film-making.

The third volume in an authoritative and comprehensive series, The Photobook: A History volume III provides a unique perspective on the story of contemporary photography through the genre of the photobook. Continuing in the vein of the first two volumes, Volume III is a study of the major trends and movements that have shaped the photobook genre globally since the birth of photography in the early nineteenth century. Volume III pays particular attention to photobooks published after World War II, covering contemporary themes of modern life, from diaristic photography of place and people to twentieth-century propaganda books and some of the finest works to emerge from the recent self-publishing boom. The Photobook volumes represent a valuable catalogue of rare and important photobooks, and since Phaidon published Volume I in 2004, are now regarded by academics, students and photobook bibliophiles as the definitive works on this subject.

During his long career as a photographer, Martin Parr has always photographed on beaches, particularly in the UK. He has often used the beach as a laboratory to experiment with new cameras and techniques. So far example, when he changed from black and white to medium format colour in the early 80s his first major project was about New Brighton, a run down seaside resort near Liverpool. In recent months he has started exploring the beach with the aid of a telephoto lens. This lens is rarely used in the world of art and documentary photography so it is a challenge to find new ways of using it. Often this involves incorporating the vegetation on the perimeter with the beach as a backdrop, both in and out of focus. So over his long career he has tried everything from a close up macro lens, a medium format wide angled camera and finally this latest offering with the telephoto.

A major new book on Martin Parr explores the photographer's most enduring subject - people - as never before By turns witty, surprising, and ingenious, Martin Parr's photographs reveal the eccentricities of modern life with affection and insight. This book - published to coincide both with Parr's 2019 exhibition at London's National Portrait Gallery and also the date the UK will leave the EU - examines what it means to be human at a time of both change and retrospection. Bringing together new work from the last decade, Only Human explores the concepts of Britishness and national identity through the rituals and habits of everyday life.

Anyone for tennis? Much loved photographer Martin Parr's unique and evocative pictures capture the spectacle of a year at the Grand Slam tournaments through 85 stunning images Since 2014, Martin Parr, one of Britain's best-loved photographers, has been granted exclusive behind-the-scenes access to the most prestigious Grand Slam tennis tournaments - followed by over 3 million fans each year - from the Australian and French Opens to Wimbledon and the US Open. Parr's vivid shots, sometimes poignant, often hilarious, provide a unique overview of life on and off the court, from players to picnickers, sun-hats, and visors to rain-stopped-play. With 85 photographs from a brand new body of work, many published here for the first time, this is an ace gift for all tennis fanatics, collectors, and fans of pop-culture photography.