Uncover Martin Parr’s lesser-known images in London

Martin Parr (1952-2025) was a eager supporter of The Photographer’s Gallery in London, a relationship that started together with his first solo present on the venue in 1977, ‘Hebden Bridge and Beauty Spots’.

During the final 12 months of his life, Parr and the gallery labored collectively to plan an exhibition specializing in the works he made in rural Ireland within the early Nineteen Eighties, a set the photographer felt had not been proven extensively.

The collection, A Fair Day, was Parr’s final main mission in black and white, earlier than he moved into the distinctive daring colors and hyper-realistic type debuted in 1986’s The Last Resort: Photographs of New Brighton. It depicted the lives of working Britons underneath Margaret Thatcher, and established his personal distinctive type of social documentary.

The humour and playfulness glimpsed on this lesser-known collection embodies Parr’s sometimes sharp eye. His capturing of ‘fair days’ – the instances communities gathered for commerce or entertaining, or to mark spiritual occasions – reveals a society in flux, caught between conventional rituals and a burgeoning modernisation.

In the images, dance halls and cattle buying and selling are historic foils for contemporary new buildings and plastic cups. Timeless, bleak landscapes are spiked with TV aerials; elsewhere, village halls are dominated by Nineteen Eighties vogue. As at all times, Parr finds the humanity in on a regular basis moments.

‘Martin Parr: A Fair Day’ from 9 February to 19 April 2026 at The Photographers’ Gallery, thephotographersgallery.org.uk