Martin Parr Wedding Photography

Okay, so it’s not exactly Martin Parr’s wedding photography.  It’s my wedding photography.  But there is a connection.  This wedding took place at Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire.  Martin Parr moved to Hebden Bridge in 1973 and shot some of his early iconic images there — collected in his book The Non-Conformists, a small exhibition of which was showing downstairs in the town hall where Janine and Graham got married, on the day they got married.  Just downstairs there.  The other connection is I wrote to Martin Parr last year and he didn’t reply.  But that’s still kind of a connection, right?  Okay the other connection is a way of seeing.  It’s a bold claim but I like to think I share a certain sensibility with the early Martin Parr, a way of approaching photography and celebrating the small things that speak of the bigger things.  Or perhaps they are the bigger things themselves that we sometimes overlook because we live in a hectic world — the glance backwards, a hand on a cousin’s cheek, a face pulled in the background — everything freighted with so much human meaning.  But anyway, before I get too rambly, let’s get back to the wedding day.  This was such a lovely, easy going wedding.  When you meet a bride on her wedding day for the first time and she greets you with “Give me a hug,” you know it’s going to be a great day.  Really, Janine and Graham could not have been nicer and that reflected in the warmth of everyone there.  Here now are the wedding photos.