I came across a fascinating and vehement debate on Twitter about the virtues or otherwise of Martin Parr’s photography, based on the the work he did in New Brighton in the 1980s (see attached). This gives me the opportunity to thank him for allowing me to post a photograph he took of me in about 2008 at the RA (it’s one of the photographs in my headers). I had wanted him to take photographs of the RA’s Summer Exhibition which I felt would have suited his style of sardonic social photography as I was an admirer of the immediacy of his photographic style – social realism which I can now see might be regarded as possibly lacking in sympathy for his subjects. He’s surely both an interesting and important photographer with a very identifiable and, in its time, new approach.

https://www.magnumphotos.com/arts-culture/society-arts-culture/martin-parr-the-last-resort/