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A major retrospective of work by Bristol-based photo-documentarist Martin Parr opens at the M Shed at the end of the month. Steve Wright puts himself in the picture.

“People call me anything from voyeur to patronising. I actually think I’m quite affectionate. I like people.” Martin Parr, Britain’s best-known social documentary photographer, is well aware of the criticisms sometimes levelled at his work. Some critics have detected a patronising, even a cruel edge to some of Parr’s photos, depictions of life in suburban England that show Britons at their most unvarnished.

You’ll be able to make your own mind up this month, as a major Parr retrospective goes on show right here in his home town of Bristol. The exhibition, at the Harbourside’s fledgling M Shed museum, will feature some 60 scenes from Bristol, Bath, Weston and surrounding areas, taken during Parr’s two and a half decades living in Bristol. A small selection of the prints, chosen by the public, will go to the museum’s permanent collection.

There are pictures of the Clevedon Swimmers, who take a ritual dip in the briny Bristol Channel every day of the year; of Dutch footie fans watching the World Cup Final on the big screen in Queen Square; of sedate bowls matches, livelier St Pauls Carnival scenes, and much more. You’ll find a mix of scenes in the exhibition, covering Parr’s diverse interests – documenting us Brits at rest, work and play. There are scenes from ‘The Cost of Living’, Parr’s 1980s project about the middle classes in Bristol, and images from a year-long project documenting life in the ‘typical’ traditional-cum-commuter village of Chew Stoke, south of Bristol. “It was a portrait of the village in the 1990s, when magazines had a lot of money and the Telegraph commissioned me to do a year in the life of a village,” Parr tells Venue from his west Bristol kitchen. “They ran it over 17 pages of the magazine!”

Back to those accusations, though. Parr maintains that his images, far from patronising, are merely (an unfamiliar word in modern photography, this) honest. “We’re used to photography supplying us with propaganda, or lies about the world. When people say, ‘I don’t photograph well’, what they actually mean is, ‘I haven’t come to terms with how old I’ve become’.

“Most of the photos in magazines, including yours, are to do with selling – products, ideas, people, lifestyles, holiday destinations. Most Facebook pics are merely how people want to be seen by the world. So we’re surrounded by lies. All I do is show things as I find them. That throws some people and they think it’s cynical and voyeuristic, but I’m just showing life as it is. People say, ‘oh, he’s out to show people at their worst’: not true. I’m out to show people as they are.” So how easy is it to get a genuine picture, then? “People constantly smile for the camera, and that can be an issue you have to navigate around. Most of the pictures I take are failures.”

I wonder if some of the very British traditions Parr seeks out – village fetes, bingo evenings – are being lost as ever more of us lose ourselves behind iPods, Facebook avatars and 30inch plasma TVs. “The whole world is becoming Americanised so yes, there is homogenisation,” Parr agrees. Does that make him seek out authentic Britishness all the harder? “No, because I am often photographing the very act of homogenisation. I am interested in both change and tradition. I’m always seduced by nostalgia but at the same time I understand that, as a documentary photographer, you have a responsibility to document how the world is changing.”

Does he think of his photos as observation pure and simple or is there ever a social, political campaigning strand? “These photos are about how we live – but they are very subjective, seen through my eyes. What you see in each photo is down to the viewer. I don’t preach one way or the other – I am attracted to ambiguity. I like to have a story within a photo, which the viewer can read as they want.

“And the images have to be entertaining and accessible. I’m a serious photographer, but I disguise it to look like entertainment. I’m not a photographer who goes out to change the world. But I bring in issues like consumerism, tourism, globalisation: I’ve touched on all these over the years. So there will be pictures of supermarkets in there – but none of Stokes Croft Tesco. I don’t do hard news, basically.”

Subtle, sublime and softly atmospheric his photographs may be, but to many people Parr will be best known for a work that contains none of his images. Instead, 1999’s ‘Boring Postcards’ is a selection from Parr’s extensive haul of postcards of post-war British municipal architecture – 155 ‘comically dull’ images of airport terminals, caravan sites, bus stations, motorways and housing estates, with captions like ‘Town Centre, Redditch: Traffic Interchange’ and ‘Tonypandy Car Park’. “I did a show called ‘The Worst Postcards’ at Watershed 20 years ago, which got national coverage,” Parr recalls. “I was quite taken aback by that – I realised that this was a subject that made really made people light up. So we refined it, did the book, and out of all the books I’ve ever done, it’s been by far the biggest seller. And there’s not a photo by me in there!

“The photos are all about the utopia of rebuilding Britain after the war: motorways, shopping centres, all these modern icons that now – because they were so unusual, and so celebrated – look a bit naff. Of course the postcards aren’t boring at all, they’re absolutely fascinating, but if I’d called it ‘Interesting Postcards’ no one would have bought it.”

BRISTOL AND WEST: PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARTIN PARR WAS AT M SHED, PRINCES WHARF, BRISTOL BS1 4RN, FROM 31 AUG-27 NOV. FFI: WWW.MSHED.ORG

Copyright Steve Wright 2011