Martin Parr CBE awarded Honorary Fellowship at UWTSD Swansea Class of 2023 Graduation

12 July 2023

Documentary photographer, Martin Parr CBE, has today (12 July) received an Honorary Fellowship at the University’s summer graduation ceremonies.

Martin Parr wearing a black academic gown, blue and yellow hood, and a mortarboard hat, and holding a scroll with the UWTSD coat-of-arms picked out in gilt.

Martin Parr was born in Surrey in 1952 later studying Photography at Manchester Polytechnic. He has exhibited his work globally since 1974, including exhibitions at The National Portrait Gallery and The Photographer’s Gallery, London, The National Centre of Photography, Paris and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Japan. Parr is prolific in his output and has published over a hundred books of his own work.

He has won many awards throughout his career including the Royal Photographic Society’s Centenary Award, Photokina’s Eric Solomon Award for photojournalism and in 2017, Sony World Photography Award for Outstanding Contribution to Photography. Parr was the president of Magnum Photos between 2013 – 2017, and remains one of the country’s most popular photojournalists, contributing to a wide range of printed media. Parr founded the Martin Parr Foundation in 2014, opening its premises in Bristol in 2017. In addition to holding an extensive collection of Martin’s own work, the Foundation supports ‘emerging, established and overlooked photographers’. It places an emphasis on accessibility and diversity and offers bursaries to support minority ethnic photographers in the UK

At today’s ceremony, he was honoured in recognition of his exceptional services to documentary photography and photojournalism. Presenting Martin Parr to the congregation was Sarah Clark, University Secretary. She said:

“It is very great privilege to present to you Martin Parr CBE as an Honorary Fellow of the University.

“The documentary photographer is often anonymous, the unseen and silent presence behind the lens, the observer rather than participant. We remember great photographs without knowing who took them. But there is a small band of photographers who break through that shield of anonymity because their work is so influential, so distinctive and so prolific. Martin Parr is one such photographer - indeed he is probably the UK’s most famous living photographer. His work brilliantly captures modern society and culture, and the colour, foibles and preoccupations of our age.

“Throughout his long career Martin has visited and photographed Wales. In 2004 he became a professor at the School of Documentary Photography at the University of Wales, Newport, where he taught part-time. In October 2019, a major exhibition of his photographs of Wales opened at the National Museum in Cardiff. Many will recall visiting the exhibition as one of the final pleasures before the March 2020 lockdown.

“My favourite photograph in the collection, taken with a telephoto lens, shows an orderly queue of people waiting patiently at an ice cream van on Tenby South Beach, tiny against the vast expanse of sand stretching out around them. I see this photograph in my kitchen every day, Vice-Chancellor, because it was reproduced on a fridge magnet sold at the National Museum. For me, that little fridge magnet says a lot about why Martin Parr’s work is so special - it is commercial and accessible, it is evocative and humorous, it is technically brilliant. It offers a unique vision that helps us to see the world afresh and anew time after time.”

On receiving the award, Martin Parr CBE, commented:

“I’m an obsessed photographer and I think they that’s very important part of what I do. When I look back on my career, I think the thing that has kept me going is the fact that I’ve always wanted to be a photographer – I’m as excited as I was taking pictures last weekend as I was back in the early 70s.

“I think this obsession is absolutely crucial and of course particularly to the artists that are sitting here that have graduated. That is the thing that will keep you going because now you’re leaving the University, you’re on your own. You haven’t got to supply work for you examination, nobody will be asking you to do something - it’s down to you and this is a great opportunity for you to shine and come through.

“Thank you very much for this great fellowship. It’s particularly pleasing for me because of my close association with Wales with the show in Cardiff at the National Museum of Wales and also the fact that we very often escape to Tenby to look at the sea and thank you Sarah for your very kind words. Good luck to everybody who have graduated and thank you very much.”