LONDON.- Rocket presents its thirteenth solo exhibition of photographs by the internationally renowned British photographer Martin Parr. The exhibition will run for five months.

This exhibition is dedicated to the increasingly controversial subject of smoking and highlights the evolution of smoking culture over the last five decades. The exhibition – and new book of the same title – spans the length of Parr’s career with photographs from 1970 to 2019.

Throughout his career Martin Parr has captured daily life as it really is and as you sift through the archives it is rather difficult to not stumble upon a cigarette, cigar, pipe or – in recent years – a dreaded vape. So, with murmurs of the United Kingdom banning the purchase of tobacco by anyone born after 2009, no time seems more ideal to offer up a typically Parr commentary on society’s ever-changing relationship with smoking.

The exhibition coincides with the publication of Parr’s latest photobook – No Smoking is a survey of smoking culture, edited & designed by Sid Stephenson and published by The Rocket Press, supported by DMB Represents. The First Printing was released on 8 November 2024 at Paris Photo and sold out within a week. The Second Printing will be issued for this exhibition.

Martin Parr (UK, b1952) has been represented by Rocket since 1997 and has been a full member of Magnum Photos since 1994. His institutional solo exhibitions in recent years include Only Human, National Portrait Gallery, London (2019); Think of Scotland, Aberdeen Art Gallery (2019); Martin Parr Retrospective, NRW-Forum, Dusseldorf (2019); and We Love Sports, Camera, Turin (2021). In 2017 Parr founded the Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol and in 2021 he was awarded a CBE for his services
to photography. In May 2023 Parr is honoured with the Photo London Master of Photography Award.

Photographs by Martin Parr are held in numerous public collections including: Tate Gallery, London; the Arts Council of Great Britain; V&A, London; The Hepworth, Wakefield, Yorkshire; Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Los Angeles County Museum; Australian National Gallery, Canberra.

Martin Parr has published over 145 books of his own photography. Over the last decade Jonathan Stephenson has been working on an official bibliography titled Parrbooks and production is currently underway for publication in 2025.