Martin Parr. Global Warning
Jeu de Paume, Paris
From January 30, 2026 until May 24, 2026
Looking at a photograph by Martin Parr today means confronting something much closer to ourselves than we might like to admit. The exhibition dedicated to his work offers a lucid, almost unsettling journey through over fifty years of images that have documented how we have become what we are. Parr never chased extraordinary events; instead, he built a persistent archive of the everyday, convinced that it is in the smallest routines that the deepest contradictions are hidden. The disorder in his images is not the spectacular chaos of crises or disasters—those are easy to capture—but a pervasive, normalized confusion. It is the disorder of a world functioning exactly as it was designed to. From his early black-and-white series shot across England and Ireland to the color breakthrough that would make his work instantly recognizable, Parr has maintained a consistent vision: direct, intimate, never neutral. His photography is always a close engagement, a body-to-body encounter with the subject.
“I create entertainment that carries a serious message, if one chooses to read it, but I don’t aim to convince anyone: I simply show what people already think they know.”
We could start by organizing Parr’s photographic work into thematic threads, which is precisely how it is presented in the exhibition at the Jeu De Paume Gallery in Paris. Leisure, for example, is one of Parr’s favorite territories. Beaches, parks, and tourist attractions become spaces where the natural landscape is bent to the demands of entertainment. Sand, plastic, sunburned skin, food, waste—all coexist. There is no overt judgment, yet the sequence of images quietly challenges our very idea of leisure. The colors are vivid, vibrant, and seemingly cheerful, but the impressions they leave make us question what we are really seeing. Parr shows us the many contradictions and excesses in the way modern society experiences its “moment of leisure.” Consumerism, another central theme, appears as a pervasive force crossing social classes and geographies. In his photographs, supermarkets and shopping centers take on an almost ritualistic quality. Objects are accumulated, desired, displayed. Humans often appear as mere extras. Parr observes this world with a one-of-a-kind sense of humor. His photographs make us smile, but it is a smile that fades quickly, giving way to a moment of recognition: we are inside these images, not outside of them—and all of these things, in one way or another, are things we do ourselves.
Tourism is perhaps the subject that best encapsulates Parr’s vision. For over forty years, he has photographed the global tourist, capturing their repetitive, standardized behaviors across widely different contexts. Monuments, beaches, and historic cities become interchangeable backdrops for the same actions: looking, photographing, consuming, leaving. It is a critique of the way we “visit” today: there is no discovery, no curiosity; the spirit of travel has been completely flattened. Within this framework, economic and environmental imbalances also come into focus, as do the fractures between the global North and South. Parr constructs his narrative through accumulation, allowing the similarities themselves to speak. In his more recent series, he introduces the theme of technological dependency. Parr photographs people absorbed in screens, isolated even when surrounded, a quiet testament to how the present is shaped by these postures and automatic gestures.
“We are heading toward disaster, but we’re all in it together. No one will dare to ban cars or air travel.”
What keeps Parr’s work relevant today is his openly non-moral stance. The photographer is fully aware that he himself is a product of the same cultural and social mechanisms he documents—part of the same world, sharing its contradictions. What may have initially seemed lighthearted or even playful now reveals a subtle gravity, the essence of this Global Warning. His photography belongs to a tradition of critically sharp, distinctly British humour. Parr asks viewers to look closely, to accept the discomfort that comes from recognizing themselves in what they see. In his images, the message is never immediate; it unfolds slowly, only becoming clear when we realize that the world before us is not distant—it is our own, exactly as it is.
For further information Jeudepaume.org.
