True to himself, Martin Parr’s uncompromising photography

For more than half a century, renowned documentary photographer Martin Parr’s bold images of Thatcher-era lingerie parties, New Brighton Beach visitors standing next to piles of rubbish, and kitsch Manchester shopping malls have provided a humorous and idiosyncratic look at the contradictions of British consumer habits. Now, focusing on the photographer’s work for the fashion industry, Fashion Faux Parr (Phaidon, 2023) offers a retrospective documenting his three decades of shoots for Vogue and collaborations with brands including Gucci, Balenciaga, and Stüssy.

How to interpret the title’s pun? Is fashion photography nothing more than a side gig for the “faux Parr,” as opposed to the “real” Parr’s award-winning, documentary-style images? Or are his sardonic, stark photos—models in the bathroom for Numero Tokyo, Urban Outfitters necklaces over false teeth at a booth in a Moroccan souk, already wrinkled French sunbathers wearing Gucci—faux pas into the glamorous, imaginary world of fashion? Perhaps the title refers to the photographer’s decision to include professional missteps, such as a cancelled Balenciaga campaign in 2023 or a portfolio of emerging London designers he shot “for a small magazine that didn’t pay his bill”—the introduction says—“and the photos never saw the light of day.” “It’s up to everyone to interpret it as they wish, really,” Parr replies with a wry smile. But it is not a question of over-interpreting. “Fashion is just another extension of my work; I use the same styles, the same techniques. That is why, when you go through the book, you can see that it was me who took the photographs, because – as you would expect – you can perceive that style, that language and that palette.” “The only difference,” he points out, “is that I arrange things when I do a photo shoot, whereas when I work for myself I take things as they are.”

The 250 photographs included in the book mix the mundane with the majestic, in an irreverent vision of the fashion diaspora. There are portraits of Dame Vivienne Westwood in a dubious public toilet wearing a Climate Revolution T-shirt and sheer trousers, and of designer Paul Smith in London, sitting at a cluttered desk surrounded by piles of books, scraps of fabric, toys and knickknacks of all kinds. A high-octane snap of Anna Wintour in the front row at Milan Fashion Week is sandwiched between photo shoots in a supermarket and models making faces at the camera at a petrol station in Arles, France. “There’s a kind of mischief here – I think that’s the word that best describes it – that is perhaps subversive, like breaking into a dentist’s office,” he says, referring to one of the book’s highlights: a 2004 photo shoot for Kid’s Wear magazine in a German dentist’s office while a young patient was getting a cleaning. He adds: “That surreal aspect can turn a photo into an image that you have to look at twice to try to understand what’s going on.”

It seemed unlikely, but this bold, gritty approach to photography made Parr (71), a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, a favourite with designers. To promote Henry Holland’s Spring/Summer 2016 menswear collection, he photographed a huge scarf bearing the slogan “Martin Fucking Parr” decorating an ice cream shop in the town of Ramsbottom, in Greater Manchester. “It’s actually hard to get hold of,” he says. “I don’t know how many were produced, but they seem to have sold out very quickly. I have one in our archive.”

Last year he photographed Simon Porte Jacquemus’s extravagant show at Versailles for Le Chouchou. The brand published a limited-edition book featuring images of guests in white rowing boats on the park’s Grand Canal. During a signing that Parr and Jacquemus held at the designer’s flagship store on Avenue Montagne in Paris, the photographer was treated like a fashion rock star. “We signed and dedicated 500 books in three hours and twenty minutes,” he says. The fashion intelligentsia has turned his name into a term in itself. When Alessandro Michele was Creative Director of Gucci, he titled a watch campaign “Parr Time.” Along with the work of the equally acclaimed fashion photographer Juergen Teller, the “dirty realism” of Parr’s images helped pave the way for the unprejudiced lenses of many of today’s fashion documentarians such as Jack Davison, Harley Weir and Sam Youkilis. “The theme of fashion photography is to solve a problem: how to make an interesting image of a certain accessory or garment? And documentary photographers work with ideas. So people use our ideas and apply them to fashion.”

One of his first forays into that world was a flight to Rimini in 1999, when Italian magazine Amica sent him to Fellini’s hometown on Italy’s north-east coast for a photo shoot against the backdrop of the seaside resort’s nightclubs and shallow beaches. Instead, Parr photographed the sequin-clad models while local bouncers flaunted Speedo swimsuits and elderly ladies in sun hats entered the frame. The editorial was a kind of natural extension of his candid shots: they often act as windows into how style shapes Britons’ identity, whether it’s a silk-and-brocade spectacle at a Sikh wedding, a hen party with half-naked attendants, or a fishmonger in a Burberry-style plaid turban. “I think what people are wearing comes through much more obviously in my documentary work than in my fashion photos,” he muses. “I’m true to reality.”