We Are Martin Parr

The Photography Seoul Museum of Art, in collaboration with Magnum Photos and Martin Parr Foundation, presents We Are Martin Parr, a major retrospective held in Asia following the artist’s passing.

The internationally renowned photographer Martin Parr (1952–2025) spent decades persistently photographing ordinary moments of consumption and leisure unfolding within everyday life. The photographs he left behind, shaped by his distinctive humor and keen observation, have become a vast landscape through which we experience contemporary visual culture today.

This exhibition approaches Parr’s photography not through a single lens centered on social satire or the critique of consumer culture, but through the candid and direct way of looking that he sustained throughout his life. Figures captured at an uncomfortably close range, objects saturated with intense color, and a gaze that lingers on seemingly trivial moments all invite viewers to look again at the everyday scenes they so often overlook. The people in his photographs are not distant others, but reflections of ourselves today, as individuals who consume, enjoy, and present ourselves through images.

The exhibition presents 14 major series, spanning from his early works to his later years, alongside more than 500 photographs and 90 selected photobooks published over the course of his life. The exhibition also includes his photographs of the "North Korea” and “South Korea series”, taken during his visits to the Korean peninsula between the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Curated by: Hyunjung Son (Curator), with assistance from Minhoon Lee and Yubin Song (Exhibition Coordinator)

Organized by: Seoul Museum of Art / In collaboration with Magnum Photos, Martin Parr Foundation 

For more information about Photo SeMA, please visit SeMA—Photography Seoul Museum of Art, where detailed information about the space and the exhibition is available.