MPF Bookshop

Here is Millie’s Sunday bookshop pick, Chew Stoke by @MartinParrStudio , published by @RRBPhotobooks ✨ In 1992 #MartinParr immersed himself in the rural Somerset village of #ChewStoke, where he spent a year documenting village life 🏡 This early Parr body of social documentary photography was originally a commission for The Telegraph Magazine, which published a 16 page feature of the work in 1993. Available in store @MartinParrFDN and online, link in our bio! Photos - Chew Stoke, England, 1992 © Martin Parr / Magnum Photos

20 MAY join us in the MPF gallery for our panel event and learn more about Martin Parr's seminal work, The Last Resort, with a unique insight from Martin’s contemporaries 🤓 As usual, we'll have copies of our brand new book The Last Resort, 40 Years On, copublished by @MartinParrFDN and Dewi Lewis publishing. Diane Smyth / @dismy (editor at British Journal of Photography) will chair the discussion, leading a conversation with @Paul.Reas (photographer), Val Williams (curator) and @MaisieCousins (photographer), delving into The Last Resort‘s impact and enduring significance. This talk will be set against the backdrop of the exhibition, where the full set of prints from The Last Resort photobook are on display. Link in bio for full details or to book your space ☝️ Produced as part of a pioneering wave of new colour work in the 1980s, The Last Resort would go on to help shape the photography landscape in Britain. This work became Martin’s best known series and established him as one of Britain’s most influential photographers. Photos - New Brighton, England, 1983-85. From ‘The Last Resort’ © Martin Parr / Magnum Photos

Family Ties by @TinaBarney_ is our Friday book highlight, which was co-published by @ApertureFND and @Atelier_EXB in 2024 🙌 ✨ Tina’s keenly observed portraits offer a window into a rarefied world of privilege with sixty large-format works imbued with a spontaneity and intimacy that remind us of what we hold in common. Looking through the pages, you discover a sense of surrealism that gives a Saltburn-esque aesthetic of the upper class in this interesting and thought provoking book. ✨ In the late 1970s, Tina began a decades-long exploration of the everyday but often hidden life of the New England upper class, of which she and her family belonged. Photographing close relatives and friends, she became an astute observer of the rituals common to the intergenerational summer gatherings held in picturesque homes along the East Coast. Developing her portraiture further in the 1980s, she began directing her subjects, giving an intimate scale to her large-format photographs. 👇 Family Ties is available to purchase both online and in the bookshop at the @MartinParrFDN 📚 @TinaBarney_ @ApertureFND @Atelier_EXB #mpfbookshop

We’ve produced a new hardback publication to accompany our current show, The Last Resort, 40 Years On 🍦 This exhibition is to celebrate the remarkable career of Martin Parr 💙 The exhibition catalogue brings together many images from The Last Resort alongside new texts, a look at Martin’s contact sheets from the time, as well as an insight from Peter Brawne, who worked with Martin to design the original 1986 publication. Link in bio for full details or to get your copy ☝️ ‘The pictures from The Last Resort still hold very well. When I get to the Pearly Gates, those are the ones I’d probably get out first!’ – Martin Parr This book is co-published by MPF and @dewi_lewis_publishing 🙌 Photos - New Brighton, England, 1983 - 85 © Martin Parr / Magnum Photos

⭐ New in this week! ⭐ Pirates, Cowboys and Jokers by Jon Nicholson. It's not about sport. Pirates, Cowboys and Jokers is the opening chapter of Jon Nicholson's long term project on the UK's banger racing scene; its community and its creativity. Every weekend and on some weekdays from January to November they race ‘bangers’. These are grassroots, passionate people who delight in the colour and drama of their custom paint jobs as much as watching them smashed up on the track. This is a family affair with young kids getting stuck in and learning about the cars. The race meetings represent great gatherings. BBQs on the back of a flatbed truck heighten a prevailing and welcome sense of camaraderie. Pirates, Cowboys and Jokers is available both online, and in the bookshop at @MartinParrFDN 📚 Photos from Pirates, Cowboys and Jokers © @JonNicholsonPhotos Published by @RRBPhotobooks #mpfbookshop

Today we are taking a look at Der Engel by Iacopo Pasqui 📚 co-published in 2024 by 19 Rivers and Fotofestiwal. In this work Iacopo gives us a fly on the wall perspective of the place he is now calling home ✨ Flicking through the pages of Der Engel, Iacopo gives us a poetic insight to his life, and a fly on the wall perspective of the place he is now calling home with some really beautiful imagery. “We can never fully know a person, a place, or a story, however, if I were an angel, then I could listen to every single person, I could get to know you – at long last – I could understand you all; understand everything. Perhaps though, it’s in the mystery of incomprehension, and of not knowing, where the magnitude of life resides. That incomprehension that renders both the world and humans unpredictable, illogical, and full of vital, and at times explosive, energy. Maybe we don’t need to know the true intention and nature of a beautiful gesture when something is just beautiful and that’s it. In fact, often it would be better not to seek out answers or explanations because this is what life is: sometimes authentic, sometimes fake; sated or miserable, overflowing or empty. Wenders’ angels knew this all too well, so well they decided to become human.” - Iacopo Pasqui @IacopoPasqui Co-published by @Witty_Books / @Fotofestiwal / 19 Rivers #mpfbookshop

This bank holiday Sunday we’re looking back at Kiss It! by Abbie Trayler Smith ✨ “Such an important book for the world to see today, when society is under so much immense pressure to look a certain way. The relationship between Abbie and Shannon is pure and inspiring, and the work they’ve made together is definitely one to go down in history.” Over the course of 12-years, Trayler-Smith documented Shannon’s journey from teenager to adult — navigating friendships, family, first-boyfriends, prom nights, holidays and jobs. Shannon has been the central inspiration for Trayler-Smith’s long-term project, ‘The Big O’ examining the issue of obesity in school-age children and young adults. Abbie has just exhibited Kiss It!/ The Big O at @BFFMantova , in Italy. She will also be exhibiting at @BucharestPhotofest in Bucharest later on in the year, which is on from the 9th – 18th October 2026. 🤩 @AbbieTS Published by @Gost_Books #mpfbookshop

One of our picks of the week is The Season by Italian photographer Giulia Vanelli. The Season offers an intimate narrative, illustrating an emotional journey through childhood and youth memories woven amidst the summer seasons of a small seaside village. This place, enriched by the ancestral magic it has carefully guarded over the years, is able to flatten rhythms and stretch the months, creating a temporal cycle that appears to resist the changes of the external world. Slowness becomes a central element, permeating the atmosphere of the images and prompting viewers to reflect on the relationship between time and memory, as well as on the nuances of a relationship that can be both comforting or claustrophobic, depending on the circumstances. The book is available to purchase at the MPF Bookshop both online and at the @MartinParrFDN 📚 🌻 @GiuliaVanelli Published by @Witty_Books #mpfbookshop

A highlight from the bookshop staff this week is ODE by Melissa Schriek 🌻 “Melissa has a style of photography that’s very recognisable. Having all of these limbs floating around in the book had the perfect balance of silliness and beauty, it really brings out my true love for girlhood.” 📚 ✨ "One of the primary motivations for starting ODE was to pay homage, quite literally, to sisterhood and female friendship. Throughout my life, I've been inspired by the power and unity of women, and that admiration continues to grow. The bond and connection that I often witness and experience among women hold significant importance to me. It struck me how this bond is frequently misrepresented in popular media as 'toxic', dramatic, or hostile, and at times, female friendship is overlooked altogether. "In response, I set out to create a photographic narrative that would present a different perspective on friendship, while maintaining authenticity. I photographed numerous pairs of best friends, mostly in public space, aiming to explore the essence of their connections through portraiture, body language and movement." ODE is available to buy online, and in the bookshop located inside the @MartinParrFDN 📚 @MelissaSchriek Published by @GuestEditions #mpfbookshop

06 May @Amak_Mahmoodian joins us at @MartinParrFDN for an artist talk on her series One Hundred and Twenty Minutes ✨ This talk will be followed by questions from the floor and a book signing at @MPFbookshop , where we will have copies of Amak’s book, Zanjir, available for purchase and signing. Amak is shortlisted for the 2026 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize for this work, which is currently on display at @ThePhotographersGallery as part of the DBPF26 exhibition. For this project Amak has worked closely with sixteen collaborators over a period of six years, holding long-term conversations on recurring dreams and the effects of exile on memory and identity. Each of the sixteen collaborators are living in exile from their home country. Join Amak as she shares the working processes and journey of collaboration with the sixteen participants, with a focus on the research that underpins this body of work. Link in the MPF bio to book your space 🎟️ Photo from ‘One Hundred and Twenty Minutes’ © Amak Mahmoodian

✨ New to the MPF bookshop shelves is Snatch Out of Time by Tom Wood ✨ Tom Wood met up with artist and collaborator Padraig Timoney to finalise the Men and Women book layouts in 2011. As their work was finished, retiring to a nearby hostelry, Timoney presented Wood with a “surprise” - a dummy book he had put together, made up of outtakes from the Photie Man book they had worked on 10 years earlier. However due to time limitations it was left unpublished. Now re-edited to include more images and material from the past 10 years. Tom came to the @MartinParrFDN a few weeks back and gave a talk on his photography career and his friendship with Martin. He signed some copies of Snatch Out of Time which are available in the bookshop and soon to be online 📚✨ @TomWoodArchive @WatersofNight Published by @Superlabo #mpfbookshop

⭐ New arrival in the bookshop! ⭐ Poppy Promises by Thomas Duffield is one of the newest arrivals to grace our shelves at the MPF bookshop 📚 A beautifully poignant and personal insight to Thomas’s relationship with his father. The personal text messages between them both compliment the photography beautifully, giving this really lovely insight to their father-son relationship and the hurdles that have come with it. Poppy Promises is available to buy at the MPF bookshop, located in the @MartinParrFDN , and will be online very soon 🌷 @Thomas.Duffield Published by @Witty_Books #mpfbookshop