Martin Parr: The Non-Conformists

In 1975, fresh out of art school, Martin Parr moved to the picturesque Yorkshire Pennine mill town of Hebden Bridge. Over a period of five years, he documented the town in photographs, showing in particular the aspects of traditional life that were beginning to decline. Susan Mitchell, whom he had met in Manchester and later married, joined Parr in documenting a year in the life of a small Methodist chapel, together with its farming community. Such chapels seemed to encapsulate the region's disappearing way of life. Here Martin Parr found his photographic voice, while together he and Susie assembled a remarkable and touching historic document--now published in book form for the first time. The book takes its title from the Methodist and Baptist chapels that then characterized this area of Yorkshire and defined the fiercely independent character of the town. Non-Conformist Methodists reject the tenets of state Anglicism, and the Non-Conformist chapel of Hebden Bridge is central to the town and its community. In words and pictures, the Parrs vividly and affectionately document cobbled streets, flat-capped mill workers, hardy gamekeepers, henpecked husbands and jovial shop owners. The best Parr photographs are interwoven with Susie Parr's detailed background descriptions of the society they observed. Martin Parr (born 1952) is a key figure in the world of photography, recognized as a brilliant satirist of contemporary life. Author of more than 30 photography books, including "Common Sense, Our True Intent Is All for Your Delight" and "Life's a Beach," his photographs have been collected by museums worldwide, including the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, New York's Museum of Modern Art and Tate Modern, London. A retrospective of his work continues to tour major museums around the world since opening at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, in 2002. Parr is a member of Magnum Photos.

Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 167
Publication date: 2013-10-31
Measurements: 8.3 x 9.7 x 0.9 inches
ISBN: 9781597112451

Beginning in 1975, when he was just out of art school, Martin Parr started a five-year documentary study of a fast-disaperring culture in the Yorkshire mill town of Hebden Bridge, England, and the surrounding areas. He was soon joined by Susie Mitchell, an aspiring writer he’d met as a student in Manchester, and who eventually became his wife. As she explains in the introduction to the book “We started tentatively to document things that seemed to be deeply traditional, or in decline, or both.” Nearly 40 years later, Martin Parr has finally compiled the images in a book. His photographs of farmers, mill workers, coal miners, game keepers, shop owners, henpecked husbands and other subjects are interspersed with stories Susie Parr wrote at the time about some of those same people.–David Walker”PDN” (12/01/2013)

Martin Parr is a key figure in the world of photography, recognized as a brilliant satirist of contemporary life. He has published over seventy photobooks of his photographs, including The Non-Conformists (Aperture, 2013), Black Country Stories (2014), and We Love Britain (2014). His work is also in the collections of museums worldwide, including the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum; and Tate Modern, London. Parr is a member of Magnum Photos.
Susie Parr is a writer and researcher, and author of the critically acclaimed The Story of Swimming (2011); she and Martin Parr married in 1980.