Watch: Martin Parr on His Limitless Fascination With People
Watch the photographer explain the importance of patience and planning when capturing people on the street and his transition from black and white to color work
Magnum Photos’ first online education course, The Art of Street Photography, sees seven Magnum photographers with renowned and distinct practices exploring the breadth of street photography. The Magnum collective has a long history in the genre, with co-founder Henri Cartier-Bresson’s seminal concept of ‘the decisive moment’ setting an early precedent for the collective’s exploration of ‘the street’.
Through a curriculum of ten in-depth, on-demand video lessons Bruce Gilden, Martin Parr, Susan Meiselas, Richard Kalvar, Carolyn Drake, Peter van Agtmael and Mark Power share their advice to photographers of all levels, alongside focused input from industry experts.
To celebrate the launch of The Art of Street Photography, we collaborated with NOWNESS on a special series of three short films as part of their ‘Photographer in Focus’ series, exploring the practices of three of the course instructors: Martin Parr, Bruce Gilden and Susan Meiselas.
Here, Martin Parr explains the never-ending allure of photographing people, the importance of identifying ideal locations in which to work, and the importance of patience – waiting for those individuals who are ‘almost cliches of themselves.’ You can also see the Meiselas and Gilden films here, and here respectively.
The Art of Street Photography course is available now. You can find out more, and sign up, here. You can watch the course trailer below.
