A Fair Day: Martin Parr’s Photos of Rural Ireland In the Early 1980s

British photographer Martin Parr (1952-2025) spent two years in the early 1980s photographing rural Ireland. He looked at dance halls, horse fairs, religious shrines, the rain, the Morris Minors and the pubs. We’ve been there with him before. And now a his black and white photographs are in display at London’s The Photographers’ Gallery.

 

“I like the idea of tourism, it’s a huge business – the biggest business in the world – and there’s this difference between the mythology of a place and the reality. We all have this idea of what a place will be like before we get there, and a lot of the time there’s many people trying to do the same thing. It’s a subject full of propaganda.”

– Martin Parr

 

“It is always fascinating to look at fashion from the 80s because it looks much more interesting now than it did at the time, and the same will apply… it is only after we take in now in 50 or 40 years’ time.”

– Matin Parr

 

“You’ll also see some Morris Minors, from my time when I lived in Ireland in the early 80s. I was very aware of looking for these parts, and I kept seeing these abandoned Morris Minors, so I’d have a look at them, and then decided to photograph them. They had multiple uses, like Chicken huts and general storage, or they were just generally eroding away, slowly falling apart.”

– Martin Parr