The images are colourful, characterful and thought-provoking. They capture a flower show, a Women’s Institute meeting, a scarecrow festival. A local vicar features, resplendent in a union jack bowler hat, as does a band of bellringers and a bulldog called Billy.
Four decades after chronicling life in the picture-postcard English village of Lacock in Wiltshire, the photographer Martin Parr returned to document what had changed – and what had not.
The results of the project, which turned out to be Parr’s final commission and was completed just months before his death last December, are going on show at the National Trust’s Lacock Abbey.
Andy Cochrane, curator at Lacock, said working with Parr – who was globally recognised for his wry observations of ordinary Britons and British life – was a joy.
He said Parr had been careful to make sure the village was on board. “It had to be a community effort. I don’t think it would have worked if it had just been the National Trust working with a Magnum photographer. It needed to be a grassroots project.
“Martin explained what he was intending to do and people began to invite him to their clubs, into their homes to meet their families. It quickly spread by word of mouth.”
Brilliant sources of material included the Lacock Garden and Allotment Association Flower Show, with one striking photograph taken there being a study of a prize-winning potato.
Cochrane said that he and Parr had the knack of making the familiar look strange and the strange look familiar. He added: “Because we’re living life and are so close to it, we don’t notice everything. It sometimes needs a photo to be taken, enlarged and hung on a wall to cause us to pause and look and think about things in a different way.
“Martin could take something as simple as a potato on a plate – something you could walk past and ignore completely – but when it is captured in a photo by Martin, it has a different resonance. That’s beautiful, that’s his gift.”
Some things have changed in Lacock in the 40 years since Parr last documented the place. “There’s more technology, for example, and people don’t always put on their best clothes to attend village events as they did back then,” Cochrane said.
But much has remained the same. Other rich events were a VE Day party (when the vicar, the Rev Si Dunn, shone in the union jack bowler hat) and a scarecrow festival. “The scarecrow festival was a gift to Martin,” said Cochrane. “He was always looking for something different.” As they walked around the village, Parr would suddenly stop and wait. “He knew an image was coming along. It was as if he was fishing for it.”
Cochrane said that over the four decades since his last project in Lacock, people had probably grown more wary of having their picture taken. “But one of Martin’s talents was to put people and animals at ease. He would chat to people, get to know their stories. It was impressive to watch and I think people are proud that a Magnum photographer has documented them and what he has created will resonate into the future.”
The setting for Parr’s final commission and the show is appropriate because the village is considered a “home of photography”. It was at Lacock that Henry Fox Talbot invented the calotype process in 1835.
Parr’s wife, Susie, said looking at the photos was a bittersweet experience. She added: “There are so many echoes from his work throughout his long career. It’s a credit to Martin that he made this work, so full of the life he loved, when his health was failing so dramatically.”
Lacock by Martin Parr opens at the Fox Talbot Museum at Lacock Abbey on 27 June 2026 and runs until 27 June 2027