Martin Parr has been taking photographsof Scotland for more than 25 years. From tourists on the rainy streetsof Edinburgh to agricultural shows in Orkney and the Outer Hebrides,Parr approached Scotland with his inimitable eye, building up a hugearchive of photographs in the process. Wry and affectionate,simultaneously attuned to local colour and the universality of humaneccentricity, Parr’s photographic vision finds the magnificent absurdityin everyday life.
Though Parr is a prolific creator ofphotobooks, his archive of Scottish images has remained largelyunpublished; in fact, his Scottish photographs represent his largestunpublished body of work to date. Martin Parr: Think of Scotlandcollects these images together for the first time on the occasion of hissolo exhibition at the newly reopened Aberdeen Art Gallery. In Think of Scotland,readers can find the expected visual iconography of Scotland—theHighland Games, the stunning landscapes, the bagpipers—but all giventhat unique Parr twist that transforms the expected and the banal intosomething outlandish and unfamiliar.
British photojournalist and collector Martin Parr(born 1952) knew he wanted to become a documentary photographer fromthe time he was 14 years old. His interest in photography was piqued byhis grandfather, who was also a photographer. Parr studied photographyat Manchester Polytechnic from 1970 to 1973 and began his career as aprofessional photographer in the mid-1970s, becoming a full member ofthe Magnum Photographic Cooperative in 1994.
