Martin Parr Quotes

[Press] Photographers are the only dictators in America.

I'm designing a seductive frame to attract an audience to a subject they would otherwise ignore. And that's what I do in all of my photography - give a stage to things that wouldn't normally receive that stage.

I have never taken a photograph without one thought in my head to amuse myself.

We are drowning in images. Photography is used as a propaganda tool, which serves to sell products and ideas. I use the same approach to show aspects of reality.

The good photograph is not the object, the consequences of the photograph are the objects. So that no one would say, how did you do it, where did you find it, but they would say that such things could be.

That [photographs] disturb readers is exactly as it should be: that's why photojournalism is often more powerful than written journalism.

It's too presumptuous and naïve to think you can change society by a photograph or anything else... I equate that with propaganda; I think that's a lower rank of purpose.

The good photograph is not the object, the consequences of the photograph are the objects.

I said the photograph isn't what was photographed, it's something else. It's about transformation. And that's what it is.

My intention is to make interesting photographs. That's it, in the end. I don't make it up. Let's say it's a world I never made. That's what was there to deal with.

A photograph can look anyway. It just depends basically on what you photograph.

Why talk about sculpture when I can photograph it?

A very big part of the life of a photograph is the afterlife.

I have no interest in being famous. I just want to make famous photographs.

I have to photograph where I am.

The things that are close to you are the things you can photograph the best.

The easy bit is picking up a camera and pointing and shooting. But then you have to decide what it is you’re trying to say and express.

I photograph what interests me. I'm not saying anything different.

One does not photograph something simply for 'what it is', but 'for what else it is.

The purpose of the photograph is to reveal the love that is felt in a single image.

It’s not when you press the shutter, but why you press the shutter.

Photography at first was asked to do nothing but embalm our best smiles for the benefit of our friends and our best clothes for the amusement of posterity. Neither thing lasts, and photography came as a welcome salve to keep those precious, if slightly ridiculous, things a little longer in the world.

Why write [about my art]? Why not just show the photographs?

I never look for a photograph. The photograph finds me and says, I'm here! and I say, Yes, I see you. I hear you.

Photographs have the kind of authority over imagination to-day, which the printed word had yesterday, and the spoken word before that. They seem utterly real. They come, we imagine, directly to us without human meddling, and they are the most effortless food for the mind conceivable.