In memory of Martin Parr: photography as a tool for invention, for critical distortion of reality

"With photography, I like to create fiction out of reality. I try and do this by taking society's natural prejudice and giving it a twist." This phrase is one of Martin Parr , and it perfectly encapsulates his poetics: photography as a tool not merely for recording, but for invention, for critically twisting reality. Parr wasn't content to simply show what was before his eyes: he took prejudices, habits, and social conventions and transformed them into images that seemed like caricatures, but were actually faithful and merciless mirrors of our everyday lives. His " fiction out of reality " wasn't a deception, but a way to reveal the intrinsic theatricality of social life. Think of his crowded beaches, the impromptu picnics, the tourists with cameras and souvenirs: seemingly banal scenes that, through his gaze, became allegories of consumption, fragility, and the pursuit of pleasure. Ultimately, Martin Parr taught us that photography is never neutral: every image is already a story, a construction, a fiction that forces us to look deeper. His quote is a manifesto of creative freedom and critical responsibility: inventing doesn't mean lying, but giving form to what society would prefer to leave invisible.

There are artists who don't just photograph the world, but reinvent it, transfigure it, and reimagine it with a lens that is never neutral, never accommodating, never complicit in conformity. Martin Parr was one of these, and his death leaves a void not only in the field of photography, but in the entire European and global cultural consciousness. His ironic, sharp, and compassionate gaze transformed everyday banality into a universal theater of contradictions, fragility, and unexpected splendor.

Parr, born in 1952 in Epsom and a member of Magnum Photos in 1994 , has built a body of work that does not simply document, but also questions, provokes and destabilises: from the beaches of New Brighton immortalised in The Last Resort , where the kitsch and resilience of the English working class mix in a mosaic of saturated colours and ordinary gestures, to the series dedicated to global tourism, in which the anonymous crowd becomes a mirror of a collective desire for escape and consumption.

His seemingly simple aesthetic was actually a sophisticated act of unmasking: the direct flash, the acid colors, the almost cruel frontality of his shots were never gratuitous, but tools to reveal the hidden theatricality of social life, to show how the everyday is always already imbued with ideology, desire, and power. Parr did not photograph to embellish, but to highlight what we prefer not to see : excess, clumsiness, redundancy, fragility .

Yet, behind the irony, there was always a form of pietas, a compassion that didn't translate into sentimentality, but into a radical respect for the dignity of the subjects, even when they were caught in the act of ridicule or excess. Parr didn't judge, but staged, and in this theatrical gesture he restored to us the possibility of recognizing ourselves, of laughing at ourselves, of understanding that beauty is never separated from contradiction.

His legacy lies not only in the over one hundred publications he authored, nor in the exhibitions he curated, nor in the institutions he founded, such as the Martin Parr Foundation , but in the way he taught us to look: not to settle for the superficial, to grasp the detail that breaks the ordinary, to transform the banal into the extraordinary. Parr made photography an exercise in critical thinking, an act of resistance against superficiality, an invitation to recognize the complexity of reality.

Today, as we bid him farewell, we can only offer him words that are both gratitude and promise: gratitude for having taught us that photography is a language that can be ironic and profound, cruel and compassionate, light-hearted and philosophical; a promise to continue to look at the world with that same slanted gaze, capable of transforming reality into fiction and fiction into truth. Martin Parr is no longer with us, but his eye lives on in every image that forces us to think, to laugh, to doubt, to recognize ourselves.