Martin Parr – The Non-Conformists

Review by Hans Hickerson ·

New photobooks of unpublished early work from well-established (read: saleable) photographers can be hit or miss, some justifying the hoopla surrounding their publication and others not. Martin Parr’s The Non-Conformists, a detailed, well-crafted exploration of an English village, is a thumbs up.

Fresh out of university as a young photographer, in the mid to late 1970s Parr and his future wife Suzie lived in a West Yorkshire village for several years, carefully documenting the local people and places in photographs and texts. They were especially interested in recording scenes that were disappearing, and they integrated themselves into the community and participated in local life.

The book is organized into chapters of related photographs. We see the Cliviger Coal Company, Lord Sevile and his gamekeepers out on the moors, the local cinema (the Hebden Bridge Picture House), the Lydgate Mineral Water Works, and numerous events at Methodist Non-Conformist Chapels. We visit rugby, soccer, and cricket fields, small textile factories, barns, farmhouses, and shops. We attend auctions, teas, and a “ramble” as well as the Sowerby Bridge Mouse Show and a meeting of the Ancient Order of Henpecked Husbands.

The photographs are black and white and compared to Parr’s later books they are small, around four by six inches. Captions under the photographs provide identifying details. Numerous smaller thumbnail images are also embedded into the extensive pages of text. We do not see Parr using the camera field of view as a multidimensional pictorial canvas as he did in his later work. These early images are simple and straightforward.

We do however see numerous examples of Parr’s curious, affectionate eye and his sly sense of humor. In the corner of a picture of Lord Sevile’s gamekeepers a dog squats on its haunches over its offering to Nature, which shows up dramatically against the white snow onto which it has been deposited. Inside a room, a formally dressed man holds up a cabbage to be auctioned. At the Mayor of Todmorden’s inaugural banquet, hungry people maneuver themselves closer to a buffet table, awkwardly elbowing in between other people while trying to appear polite. A boy hides behind a building, playing with a toy machine gun while solemn adults participate in an outdoor chapel service. A seated woman spooning sugar into her tea echoes the Last Supper scene behind her.

Suzie Parr’s texts add satisfying details that explain the rhythms of local life, give a more complete portrait of a place and people, and document and memorialize the enduring spirit of a traditional community. We learn about the extensive preparations for the chapel’s annual anniversary event and about the central importance of the church in local social life. We hear locals comment on the changes they have witnessed over the decades, including the depopulation of the rural countryside and the decline in church membership.

You have to be impressed by the thoroughness with which the Parrs investigate and document so many aspects of local life, patiently assembling their story and painting a portrait detail by detail. Bearing witness to endangered rural folkways through pictures and texts, they connect us with the past.

Presumably one of the first projects Parr attempted as a young photographer, The Non-Conformists serves as a road map for others starting out as photographers. Choose a subject not far from home. Spend time getting to know it. Document it inside and out, covering every facet of it that you can think of. Build up a body of work over time. Later on, organize it for presentation as a show or book. If you do it right you may end up with a completed project like the Parrs’. Probably not your fully realized mature style, but it won’t be student work either. You will have learned a lot and will have something to share.

Hans Hickerson, Editor of the PhotoBook Journal, is a photographer and photobook artist from Portland, Oregon.

PhotoBook Journal previously reviewed Martin Parr’s Autoportrait: 1996 – 2015

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Martin Parr – The Non-Conformists

Photographer: Martin Parr (English, 1952-2025)

Language: English

Text: Suzie Parr

Design: SMITH

Printing: Toppan, China

Hardcover with printed dustcover; 124 photographs; sewn binding; 168 pages; 8.3 x 9.7 inches; ISBN 978-1-59711-245-1

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