I Am Martin Parr | Russell Hobbs British Film Festival 2025

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Date Reviewed: 04/11/2025

It begins, as all good portraits do, with a blink - a man on the edge of a pier, camera in hand, the sound of gulls and distant tide. The lens turns toward Martin Parr, but not quite on him. He exists half-within his own mythology: the flâneur of Britain’s seaside towns, the observer of beans, burgers, and the chipped glaze of postwar leisure. I Am Martin Parr, directed by Lee Shulman, opens with a jolt — seagulls, a walker, then a blast of punk (“White Riot,” suitably raw) over a montage of Parr’s candy-coloured absurdities. The effect is immediate and arresting. You feel yourself drop into the fluorescent hum of his world, one of cracked lipstick, British flag bikinis, and chip-grease reflections — a country rendered in overexposure and irony.

The documentary’s genius lies in how it builds its rhythm around Parr’s own contradictions. He is both present and unseen, intrusive yet tender. Through archival footage, candid interviews, and generous access to the man himself, Shulman constructs a moving, if occasionally uneven, portrait of a photographer who found poetry in the grotesque and humour in the banal. The editing pulses with music and colour — it’s playful, even ecstatic - yet it’s punctuated by stillness: Parr sitting quietly by the beach, camera resting like an old friend beside him. He observes. He waits. The world performs.

The film’s early sequences trace his origins in black-and-white social documentary photography — the “serious” mode of the 1970s. These images, stark and humane, reveal a young artist learning to balance empathy and detachment. Curators and collaborators speak of Parr’s “embedded distance,” that peculiar alchemy of being both inside and outside the frame. Yet as we move into colour, the familiar Parr emerges — the bold, brash chronicler of British life. The transition feels like a liberation. Colour, for Parr, becomes a form of critique: of consumerism, of class, of the strange rituals of modern living. It’s not nostalgia; it’s anthropology with a flash.

One of the film’s great pleasures is how it lets the photographs breathe. They’re shown not as mere slideshows but as living, pulsing images — accompanied by the sound of laughter, ocean, cash registers, clinking cutlery. A child’s Coke spills down her bikini; a man slouches by a red phone booth, holding an early mobile to his ear. Each detail feels absurdly ordinary, and that’s precisely Parr’s magic. His humour is never cheap or cruel — it’s affectionate, almost devotional. 

Still, several French-speaking contributors — curators and photographers offering valuable insights — go unsubtitled, leaving moments of the film frustratingly opaque. It’s a jarring oversight, particularly in a film otherwise so attuned to detail and accessibility. Yet even in those moments, there’s a strange poetry in watching gestures and faces communicate what words cannot. Their enthusiasm, like Parr’s, transcends language.

The middle section, covering Parr’s Magnum years and the controversy surrounding his “cynicism,” deepens the portrait. We see a younger Parr, defiantly photographing the unglamorous — soggy chips, garish cakes, the cluttered consumerism of Britain in flux. The film’s use of archival footage is exceptional: Parr photographing in butcher shops and seaside towns, the camera lingering on his quiet confidence, his instinct for composition. The debate about whether his work mocks or celebrates its subjects remains unresolved, and perhaps that’s the point. As Grayson Perry observes, humour is “what keeps pomposity in check.” Parr’s humour, needle-sharp yet humane, is precisely what makes his images endure.

In its final act, I Am Martin Parr turns reflective. We see him older, moving slower, a walker by his side — but the glint in his eye hasn’t dulled. His photographs of the 2023 Coronation celebrations feel like a homecoming: Britain once again under his gaze, awash in Union Jacks, crown-shaped hats, and self-conscious pageantry. The images are absurd, yes, but they’re also tender — a people performing identity with equal parts irony and sincerity. When someone remarks that “the world looked like a Martin Parr photo that day,” it feels both compliment and prophecy.

The film ends much as it began — with Martin watching, quietly amused by the chaos around him. His laughter is gentle, self-effacing, the kind that comes from someone who truly sees. Shulman’s documentary captures that essence: a man who turned observation into art, who found the sublime in the ridiculous. It’s a celebration of looking — not passively, but curiously, critically, with humour intact.

Despite a few translation stumbles, I Am Martin Parr is a joyous, vivid, and deeply affectionate portrait of one of photography’s great eccentrics. It reminds us that the world is endlessly strange, and that sometimes, to love it, you have to laugh at it.

Reviewed by Scarlet Thomas