Martin Parr. Think of England, 1999. 'Copyright Martin Parr / Magnum Photos' in the lower right corner. Total dimensions: 34,8 x 29,6 cm on glossy paper. Very Fine condition. Printed later, 2000s. This image by Martin Parr, from the Think of England series, is a visual slap disguised as a holiday postcard. The woman in the foreground, with oversized white sunglasses and a Grace Kelly–style scarf, looms blurred against a seafront crowded with holidaymakers and deckchairs. The result is a head-on collision between individual appearance and the collective mass, between the banal and the grotesque. With colors pushed to the edge of kitsch, Parr turns the scene into a biting commentary on British identity, its clichés, and its everyday theatricality. Under the radiant light of the English seaside, what seems like a simple holiday snap becomes a cultural x-ray: irony, consumption, middle-class leisure, and humor that is as uncomfortable as it is irresistible. Parr, a Magnum Photos member since 1994, reinvented documentary photography with this gaze: corrosive, pop, and razor-sharp. His series The Last Resort, Life’s a Beach, and Think of England don’t just record habits; they caricature them with surgical precision, forcing us to laugh at what we are. Martin Parr holds a central place in contemporary photography, in dialogue with William Eggleston and Stephen Shore (masters of the everyday in color), with Nan Goldin and Cindy Sherman (chroniclers of identity and social theatricality), with Wolfgang Tillmans, Alec Soth, Joel Sternfeld, and Garry Winogrand. All transformed the vulgar and the ephemeral into material for high art. An essential piece for any collection of contemporary photography: a work that distills the biting irony and corrosive energy that make Parr not just a photographer, but a visual satirist of universal stature.