A Quote by Martin Parr

Magnum photographers were meant to go out as a crusade ... to places like famine and war and ... I went out and went round the corner to the local supermarket because this to me is the front line.
I wanted to continue doing my work, but I had to figure out how. And so what I have basically come up with is that I still go to Afghanistan and Iraq and South Sudan and many of these places that are rife with war, but I don't go directly to the front line.
When I read out loud in class, it was a joy for everyone else because I would mispronounce things so badly. I used to try to count how many people were in front of me and then work out which paragraph I would have to read out and start trying to learn it. And I would sit there thinking, 'Please let the bell go so that it doesn't get round to me.'
We're never really spotted falling out of nightclubs. We don't go to places where there are photographers hanging out.
It's all rot that they put in the war-news about the good humour of the troops, how they are arranging dances almost before they are out of the front-line. We don't act like that because we are in a good humour: we are in a good humour because otherwise we should go to pieces.
Sometimes when I'm going to the supermarket to get the coffee and cat litter, I get freaked out and see all these people staring, and you turn around and there's, like, 40 people all looking at you... and when you go around the corner, they're all following you! You start freaking out like a trapped animal.
Being born not long after the war meant that money was tight. I grew up in a rural corner of Lincolnshire and my father worked on local farms. Being one of nine kids meant we didn't have much.
I have always avoided photographing in the studio. A woman does not spend her life sitting or standing in front of a seamless white paper background. Although it makes my life more complicated, I prefer to take my camera out into the street... and places that are out of bounds for photographers have always had a special attraction for me.
I was meant to be a composer. I was meant to meet my wife and have our three children. There were a number of factors that led to all of that happening, which, if you mapped it out, you would say, 'God, a lot had to go right for all of those things to line up.'
Everyone is called, everyone is sent out… The call of God can reach us on the assembly line and in the office, in the supermarket and in the stairwell, i.e., in the places of everyday life.
He was in his chair in the corner, resting a second before he came out for the next round -- in a long line of next rounds. The thing he was fighting, you couldn't whip it for good. All you could do was keep on whipping it, till you couldn't come out anymore and somebody else had to take your place.
My dad will sit out in the last tiny corner of the garden that has sunshine until the millisecond the final vestige has gone! As kids we were encouraged to head out of the front door at daybreak, and not come back till we were tired and hungry.
Los Angeles is an uncanny place to live. It has many science fiction qualities. For example, when I'm standing in line at the supermarket and I recognise the person in front of me, but I can't figure out how I know them. Suddenly, I realise I saw them in some random commercial six years ago.
My mic is a Magnum. See me and this chick, we go back like Cro-Magnon. Man...we did it in the back of your Magnum; I said, 'Put them Lifestyles back, give me the Magnums.'
Of course I don't like the fact that my wife goes to the supermarket and there are photographers. But I realise that the press attention is the same wherever you go.
My opposition to war was not because of the horrors of war, not because war demands that the race offer up its very best in their full vigor, not because war means economic bankruptcy, domination of races by famine and disease, but because war is so completely ineffective, so stupid. It settles nothing.
What I find difficult about photo shoots is the line between playing a character - you're being asked by the photographer to take on a role like you would in a movie - and being a fancier version of yourself. It's about finding that line between being spontaneous and open to direction, but also trying to explain to photographers that the "me" is often taken out of context because it has all of this other stuff attached to it.
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