With The Last Resort, Martin Parr produced in the mid 1980s one of the bodies of work that would irreversibly transform contemporary documentary photography.
Created between 1983 and 1985 in the seaside town of New Brighton, near Liverpool, the series marked a decisive turning point in Parr’s career and opened a lasting rupture in the way social reality, leisure, and the working class were visually represented in Thatcher era Britain.
Far from any nostalgic perspective, Parr enters a human landscape shaped by decline, mass consumption, and everyday precarity. The beach, traditionally associated with escape and pleasure, becomes a saturated, uncomfortable, and contradictory stage. Crowded families, exposed bodies, debris, small gestures, and seemingly trivial situations form a fiercely honest portrait of a society in transition.
The radical use of intense color, on camera flash, and frontal framing represented a direct challenge to the dominant codes of classical documentary photography, still largely anchored in black and white and in the idea of visual neutrality. In The Last Resort, there is no distance and no aesthetic restraint. The camera operates from within the scene, fully implicated, confronting the viewer with a reality that is excessive, fragmented, and deeply revealing.
Since its original publication in 1986, the series has provoked intense debate. Initially accused of cynicism, mockery, and even disrespect toward its subjects, the work has since been reassessed as a landmark project that expanded the boundaries of documentary practice. Rather than passing judgment, Parr exposes the tensions between class, consumption, identity, and representation, directly questioning the role of the photographer and the construction of the documentary gaze.
Viewed today, The Last Resort retains an unsettling relevance. The images are not confined to a specific historical moment but resonate with contemporary issues surrounding mass tourism, social inequality, and the aestheticization of precarity. It is precisely this refusal of comforting readings that secures the series’ status as a foundational work.
Presented by the Martin Parr Foundation, this exhibition invites a renewed engagement with a project that redefined documentary photography and established a visual language fully aware of its own contradictions. The Last Resort does not offer easy answers. Instead, it insists on a critical reflection on how we look, and from where.
A key exhibition for understanding not only Martin Parr’s work, but a profound shift in the history of contemporary photography.
The Martin Parr Foundation
316 Paintworks
BS4 3AR Bristol
20 FEB – 24 MAY 2026
