This exhibition at the Jeu de Paume revisits Martin Parr’s work through the lens of the widespread disorder of our times, through different series produced from the late 1970s to today. Throughout his career, without militancy but with consistency, across the globe, Martin Parr draws a striking portrait of the planet’s imbalances and the excesses of our ways of life.
Across his many series, begun in the British Isles and in Ireland and, from the 1990s onward, extended to all five continents, recurring themes emerge: the follies and ravages of mass tourism, the dominance of the car, technological dependencies, the
consumerist frenzy, and our ambivalent relationship with the Living. Always with his singular, off-kilter gaze, Parr indirectly addresses several major drivers identified in the Anthropocene’s climate upheavals: frantic use of transport, fossil-fuel consumption, global overconsumption, environmental damage. This body of work, seemingly pleasant, reveals itself, with
time and shifts in attitudes, perhaps more serious than it initially seemed. In the light of his oeuvre as a whole, his use of distance and derision places Martin Parr in a British satirical tradition, attentive to revealing the paradoxes of our society.
« I now see that almost all the images I have taken and produced recently are indirectly linked to climate change »
Across some 180 works spanning more than fifty years of production, from his early black-and-white to recent works, the exhibition addresses, in 5 sections, our contemporary failings through recurring themes, motifs and obsessions: the way leisure reshapes the environment. From the motif of the beach to that of waste, Parr has captured the changes that the evolution of our modern lifestyles brings to landscapes, where pleasure and waste, the natural and the artificial coexist and endlessly intertwine.
« Tout doit disparaître » looks at the consumerist universe that is ours, with Parr compiling a blunt and funny inventory of our objects of desire and our modes of consumption, conceived as a new form of religion.
Through his lens, supermarkets, shopping malls, fairs and trade shows become the stage for a headlong race shared by all social classes and involving the most diverse goods, in which the human being itself sometimes becomes merchandise. « Petite Planète », named after one of his most famous books, deals with tourism, a favourite subject he explored, on every continent, in its pleasures as well as its contradictions, even its dead ends. In the places most emblematic of the phenomenon, he took an interest in the habits and
behaviours of this global tourist, also producing, in filigree, a study of North/South imbalances. In « Le règne animal », it is the sometimes difficult cohabitation between humans and animals that is studied and described, between indifference and fascination, neglect and over-attention, violence and affection.
Finally, « Addictions technologiques » addresses the question of humans and machines in its most diverse forms: cars, telephones, video games, slot machines and now computers and smartphones, which redefine every day, in our daily lives, our relationship to reality, to space and to time. « I create entertainment that contains a serious message if one is willing to read it, but I am not trying to convince anyone — I simply show what people already think they know » Martin Parr said in 2021.
A tireless photographer, often between two planes, a lover of beaches although he cannot swim, Parr never sought to pose as a giver of lessons — in this regard, he often specified that he was fully part of the world he documented and criticised. On the climate and ecological crisis:
« We’re heading toward catastrophe, but we’re all going there together. No one will dare ban the car or air travel », he said in 2022. He readily acknowledged the environmental impact of his lifestyle — notably his large carbon footprint — and refused to take a superior stance vis-à-vis his subjects.
Aware that images are no longer enough to transform the world, he nevertheless claimed a form of discreet commitment, a visual guerrilla capable of cracking dominant representations. For if Parr used humour, it was always in the service of a reflection—often critical, even satirical—that sought to destabilise idealised visions, especially those conveyed by the media and the cultural industry. Many of his images play with clichés in order to divert them, criticise them, deconstruct them, bringing to light what is absurd or misleading about them: from the aesthetic of the tourist postcard to that of wildlife photography, from the foodie habit to the selfie, it is the lifestyles and imaginaries of part of the planet that are examined, questioned, and sometimes mocked.
Martin Parr : Global Warning
30 January – 24 May 2026
Jeu de Paume
1, place de la Concorde, Jardin des Tuileries
75001 Paris
Metro Concorde (lines 1, 8, 12)
www.jeudepaume.org
