inspired by... martin parr

5th July 2006 © Lise Utne

I took a series of photos of this scene. Racing through my head were all the Martin Parr photographs I'd ever seen.


Martin Parr may disagree strongly that there's anything about this photograph that has anything at all in common with his approach to photography. The colours are duller, and no flash was fired -- for a start.


Nevertheless, there he was in my head: Martin Parr. Hovering over this scene, remote-controlling my trigger finger. 


A complicating factor is that I asked my (then ten-and-a-half-year-old) son to take some of the photos. Maybe he took this one? I can't say for sure that he didn't. And I have no idea whether he had seen any of Martin Parr's works at the time. 


But Martin Parr was definitely there. At least as an inspiring factor in seeing the value of this scenario, and thus in my decision to shoot it.