Where creativity meets connection
While usually bringing art to every section of the community, Brighton Festival recently unveiled an exhibition aimed at an exclusive audience. Unless you’re a stilt walker or professional basketball player, you’re most likely walking past works by photographers Martin Parr CBE and JJ Waller every day. Fortunately, the upper deck of the city’s buses provides a perfect platform to look down at some extraordinary images celebrating the great British seaside.
The pair have taken to the streets with their new show, Beside The Sea, which features large prints atop several city centre bus shelters. It’s bad news if you drive everywhere, you’ll miss out. Parr isn’t too worried about alienating this potential audience.
“Having an exhibition that can only be seen by a certain set of people in those circumstances is really interesting, and very appealing,” he tells me, with a gentle chuckle. “You know, it means people driving around with their SUVs will miss it entirely. Their loss…”
He tells me he’s known Walker for years. “I like his work, and that he had a show last year on the seafront. It was he who came up with the idea of the bus shelters.” There are a few similarities between the pair’s work. Both share a fascination with the human condition and seaside towns.
Waller has released collections of photographs from Brighton Pride and documented the pandemic with unconventional portraits - the latter book edited by Parr. “I also like his Beachy Head project. There’s a dedication to the areas he's photographed, like St Leonards... He's the real thing, and seems to be in for the long haul.”
When Waller approached him about the collaboration, it was an idea Parr found irresistible. “I thought it’d be difficult to pull off. But, to his credit, he really has,” Parr tells me. “He found the funding and got people involved. Basically, I've just supported him and said ‘yes’ to virtually everything that he's offered.”
The two documentary photographers have selected their favourites from each other’s portfolios for the new installations, which form part of Brighton Festival. Reproduced on a large scale, the prints platform their individual styles, each packed with wry humour, detail and gentle social commentary.
To find your own voice is a difficult thing to do in photography.
Celebrated for a distinctive documentary style, often brightly coloured and featuring everyday people, Parr’s storytelling and visual language have made his style instantly recognisable. “To find your own voice is a difficult thing to do in photography. I guess I've done that, and that has embraced a certain language and ways of looking and thinking.”
Over the last 50 years, his ability to blend humour, critique, and artistry has made him perhaps the most significant figure in contemporary British photography. “My relationship to this country is full of contradictions,” he admits. “You know, I was really pissed off about Brexit. I didn't like the riots last year, and yet I love Radio Four and a cup of tea.” In a modern society, where we seem increasingly obsessed by what ‘Englishness’ might entail, Parr may just have been offering the answer for decades.
Perhaps it’s an inherent quality, not something acquired through proclamations or flag-waving. Of course, there’s the stiff upper lip attitude. The knowing glances between our countrymen as we stoically confront incompetence or inconvenience. Often, there’s an almost transcendental lack of self-awareness, especially when on holiday. Who can understand the simple pleasure of driving to the seaside in the drizzle, then sipping tea while quietly tutting about the damp indignity of it all?
Parr's work captures the quirks and absurdities of modern life. Finding a genuine and refreshing joy in quiet eccentricity, he’s become celebrated for candid images packed with honesty and personality. From sun-worshippers to revellers at family parties, these are revealing examinations of our attitudes towards consumerism, leisure and the relentless march of time.
I'm interested in defining my relationship to the world out there through photography
The bulk of his pictures display a playful, often satirical, view of the world around us. Something which occasionally draws charges of him mocking subjects - most from those living a long way from the communities he immortalises. I’d suggest that his work instead creates a sense of belonging, drawing on subjects who are normally overlooked by the arts. “You could argue that all photography is somewhat exploitative, but these are all personal truths,” he tells me. “I'm interested in defining my relationship to the world out there through photography. And going to seaside resorts is one part of that. When I was a kid, I didn't go to the seaside because my parents were bird watchers. They’d be going to estuaries and looking for waders. I wasn’t off on day trips to New Brighton.”
He's keen to point out that he likes the old Brighton as well. Although he does prefer sand to pebbles. “I suppose the shingle of Brighton is one of the significant features of its beach. But you have the ruins of the old pier, and those swimmers who go in the water most mornings…”
Perhaps this fascination with Britain’s seaside is connected to the temporary sense of freedom it brings. It’s where you’ll find people on holiday, enjoying a chance to be themselves and, perhaps, be honest with the world. “I basically photograph leisure pursuits… tourism, beaches, you know… Because that’s when people decide what they do for themselves.”
Recently, there’s been a resurgence of interest in his work, not least fuelled by the recent release of the documentary, I Am Martin Parr. He’s fairly pragmatic about the attention, or finding himself on the other side of the lens. “Sometimes, I don't take many interviews. But, it's part of the job, really… Isn't it? …to try and communicate with people what you're doing. So, I can't really object.”
He's 72 now, and has a bad cough. But it seems there’s no intention to retire, or even a willingness to slow down. “I’m not as nimble as I was 10 years ago,” he sighs. He walks with the aid of a frame, as he gets terrible backaches when lugging his camera bag about.
People are becoming a little bit more guarded about it.
One change he has seen is in reactions to street photography. At the start of his career, photographers were still a novelty. Now, almost everyone has a camera in their pocket. “People are becoming a little bit more guarded about it, certainly at the seaside. Back in the day, when I was working in New Brighton, you could photograph kids all the time. Now, if you did that, you could get in trouble. People are maybe a bit more apprehensive about the intent of photographers these days.”
While still using a digital SLR for his work, he does concede possible he may evolve to just using a mobile phone when out shooting. It certainly wouldn’t be as noticeable. Although he disputes that the advent of autofocus cameras had much impact on the stealthy aspects of his practice. “I can still press the button and focus on whatever area I want. If it's a close-up, I want some things in focus and some things out. I've been photographing for so long that I really don’t think about it. I have the camera. I know how it works. Press the button, check it, and move on.”
JJ Waller & Martin Parr bring Beside The Sea to bus stops across Brighton & Hove on Sat 3 - Mon 26 May 2025, as part of Brighton Festival. Martin Parr appears in conversation at Brighton Dome on Fri 23 May 2025.
All images by Martin Parr
Stuart Rolt
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