Director: Lee Shulman

Documentarian Shulman’s cine-portrait of British photographer Martin Parr is as bracing and enjoyable as a 99 in a coastal sea breeze.

The picture charts the career of the photographer from his early black and white, more reportage style, pictures of working class life, to his 1986 international breakthrough with his ‘The Last Resort’ series, a mischievously satirical look at seaside holidays which caused some critics to accuse the middle class Parr of being a condescending cultural tourist.

This notion of elitism is countered by typically insightful words from artist Grayson Perry, and appreciative ones from Mark Bedford from Madness, those fellow chroniclers of working class life with all its warmth, foibles and eccentricities. French colleagues from the Magnum photo agency are good on placing his pictures in the sociological and political context. His partner, writer Susie Parr is more irreverent, amusingly pointing out that Martin, the celebrated observer of seaside life, is unable to swim.

The picture also shows the tireless photographer now, as he wanders the seaside, sometimes dependent on a walker, and charms passersbys into letting him photograph them.

Director Shulman ably matches the cheeky tone of Parr’s photos, in a sequence where he observes pensioners at a ballroom class, and a lovely moment where someone is caught doing a cheeky scratchcard during a Royal Coronation party.

I Am Martin Parr is out now.

David Willoughby

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