Lesser-known Martin Parr images seize rural Eire within the early Eighties

Martin Parr (1952-2025) was a eager supporter of The Photographer’s Gallery in London, a relationship that started together with his first solo present on the venue in 1977, ‘Hebden Bridge and Magnificence Spots’.

Over the last 12 months of his life, Parr and the gallery labored collectively to plan an exhibition specializing in the works he made in rural Eire within the early Eighties, a set the photographer felt had not been proven extensively.

The collection, A Honest Day, was Parr’s final main venture in black and white, earlier than he moved into the distinctive daring colors and hyper-realistic type debuted in 1986’s The Final Resort: Pictures of New Brighton. It depicted the lives of working Britons underneath Margaret Thatcher, and established his personal distinctive type of social documentary.

The humour and playfulness glimpsed on this lesser-known collection embodies Parr’s sometimes sharp eye. His capturing of ‘truthful days’ – the instances communities gathered for commerce or entertaining, or to mark non secular occasions – reveals a society in flux, caught between conventional rituals and a burgeoning modernisation.

Within the pictures, dance halls and cattle buying and selling are historic foils for contemporary new buildings and plastic cups. Timeless, bleak landscapes are spiked with TV aerials; elsewhere, village halls are dominated by Eighties trend. As all the time, Parr finds the humanity in on a regular basis moments.

‘Martin Parr: A Honest Day’ from 9 February to 19 April 2026 at The Photographers’ Gallery, thephotographersgallery.org.uk