Utterly Lazy and Inattentive

By the age of 14 I decided I would be a photographer It s what I will do for the rest of my life until I drop dead I knew when I was very young It was a definite decision Don t ask me why I just knew it was the right thing When Martin Parr was fourteen his teacher wrote that he was utterly lazy and inattentive in a school report He went on to become one of the most successful and sought after photographers in the world Martin has published over one hundred photobooks on many different subjects from seaside resorts to smoking over his career Now for the first and only time Martin has produced a book about himself telling his own story in his own words This autobiography combines over 150 of Martin s photographs from his earliest snapshots to the work he is doing today with his recollections and reflections on each image We meet a boy growing up in suburbia who collects obsessively and notices everything We see him exploding into the public consciousness in the late eighties with a series of startling ultra saturated colour images of the British seaside and scandalising the photography establishment in the process We see society changing over the decades from the demise of steam trains through the opening of the first McDonald s in Mos