PARIS, FRANCE.- Maison Européenne de la Photographie presents Martin Parr - Works 1971-2001, on view through September 18, 2005. Martin Parr has been taking photographs of ordinary things for thirty-five years. The dwindling congregation of a Yorkshire chapel, home made jam at a village fete, Eccles shopping centre, Morris dancers, school speech days, gymkhanas, sitting rooms, dining tables, prize marrows and tea trays. His search for 'the ordinary' has taken him to Las Vegas and Athens, Tokyo and the Gambia, to Ilford, Oregon and Milton Keynes. Martin Parr has a knack of catching us unawares, eating, pointing, kissing, staring. He senses the vulnerability in all of us, the monumental nature of making small decisions, choosing what to buy, what to wear, how to be. He has documented the death throes of the ruched satin blind and the mug tree. The constant collisions between our aspirations and our realities. Martin Parr is perhaps the Max Wall of photography, a raucous music hall turn informed by a sense of loss. ' People take up photography' he has said 'because they identify with the subjects they photograph. They can say: 'this is part of me'.

Martin Parr was born in Epsom, Surrey in 1952. His parents were active ornithologists and leading members of the Surrey Bird Club. Although not academically inclined, Parr developed an early interest in acting and in writing plays, as well as in trainspotting and stamp collecting. His interest in photography began at school and he contributed picture stories to the school magazine, but was galvanized by the exhibitions of photographs by Bill Brandt and Henri Cartier Bresson, shown in London in the late Sixties. As a child, his interest in photography was fuelled by his grandfather, George Parr, a distinguished amateur, specializing in bromoils. Holidays with his grandparents at their home in West Yorkshire were a catalyst for his enduring interest in the north of England and the English seaside. Parr's entry to the photography course at Manchester Polytechnic in 1971 coincided with the renaissance of photography as a serious art form in Britain, with the emergence of photography galleries, new initiatives in publishing and sponsorship for photographers.