Martin Parr Quotes

Most campaigns rely on photographs because the moment you do something that is a graphic interpretation where any artistic license has been taken, I think a lot of people are scared that it's going to be perceived as propaganda.

Of course, it gave the studio an enormous power, because I don't know any other place who had that skill with images to communicate with. And the need of these kinds of images are even greater now than they ever were because we are losing our life symbols.

You can't do something that is morally vacuous or dysfunctional and then write it off saying, 'It wasn't my film, I was just doing a job in it.'

I felt sometimes too responsible as an actor because people promote violence or weird things that I don't want to be part of.

Photographers must learn not to be ashamed to have their photographs look like photographs.

[Press] Photographers are the only dictators in America.

I do have a responsibility, but I would make the most boring films in the world if I woke up every morning worrying about my social responsibility.

If any artist abuses his audience as a means to any end, noble or ignoble, he better have a damn good reason for it.

With great power comes great responsibility. These are platforms with hundreds of millions of people.

You have to find the balance of figuring out how can I be effective? How can I use my platform for good, you know, without jeopardizing everything so that I don't have that platform anymore.

As an artist, we have a big influence, and we should always think if we are doing more harm than good to our viewers. We should serve as a model to them.

I do feel a responsibility to address things that are problematic, but I don't have to go out of my way to do that.

The intensive use of photographs by mass media lays ever fresh responsibilities upon the photographer. We have to acknowledge the existence of a chasm between the economic needs of our consumer society and the requirements of those who bear witness to this epoch. This affects us all, particularly the younger generations of photographers. We must take greater care than ever not to allow ourselves to be separated from the real world and from humanity.

The invention of photography. For whom? Against whom?

Just because I publish pornography does not mean that I am not concerned about the social ills that all of us are

I'm not anti-progress, obviously, but I just think progress needs to be a broader thing than just the technology we can create; it's also how we handle it and our level of awareness.

I always maintain that artists do not have any responsibility to do anything except cause no harm and do whatever we want to do as artists.

I started a software company with a couple other folks. It went public. We made plenty of money. And I thought it was this incredible mission, but in fact, we sold software to Haliburton; we sold software to Frito-Lay and Pepsi and all these companies that didn't necessarily do good things.

For A to sit down and think, What shall I do? is commonplace; but to think what B ought to do is interesting, romantic, moral, self-flattering, and public-spirited all at once. It satisfies a great number of human weaknesses at once. To go on and plan what a whole class of people ought to do is to feel one's self a power on earth, to win a public position, to clothe one's self in dignity. Hence we have an unlimited supply of reformers, philanthropists, humanitarians, and would-be managers-in-general of society.

The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality.

Should I be the one to play God? We're both about the same age, but we grew up in different neighborhoods.

We have become a nation of Kodachrome, Nikon, Instamatic addicts. But we haven't yet developed a clear idea of the ethics of picture-taking. ... Where do we get the right to bring other people home in a canister? Where did we lose the right to control our image?

I'm trying to paint a picture of what I have seen and what moved me, as well as I can. That's all.

I don't believe in censorship, but I do believe that an artist has to take some moral responsibility for what he or she is putting out there.

The death penalty makes us all murderers.