Harry Styles calls Martin Parr an ‘icon’ as shoot with late photographer emerges
Parr, who was one of the best-known documentary photographers of his time, died aged 73 in December last year.
Singer Harry Styles has called late photographer Martin Parr a “British icon” amid the release of a photoshoot with the former One Direction star in The Sunday Times Magazine.
Parr, who was one of the best-known documentary photographers of his time, died aged 73 in December last year, and took the pictures in summer 2024 at a house outside Rome Styles was staying at with friend Alessandro Michele, the former creative director at Gucci, shortly after his 30th birthday.
Styles told The Sunday Times: “Martin is someone I’ve always wanted to work with.
“He’s a British icon and his photography has a sense of humour that is often lost in what is considered to be high art.
“I love his lens, the way he looks at the quieter side of British culture and sees something special.
“He’s the photographer that, while everyone else is doing fashion shoots, he’s taking pictures of what’s going on to the side — and he’s seeing something special in that.
“The shoot came about when I spent the summer in Italy in 2024. It was a big, important, transitional moment for me — to stop working and be settled somewhere for a while.
“I was settling into that life and a new space.
“I was aware of how pivotal that time in my life was going to be and capturing it with someone like Martin felt like a fun opportunity.
“The images and the shoot were never meant to be for any outside use.
“However, when Martin sent them I fell in love with them and he was keen to see them published.
“Before he passed we’d discussed offering them to The Sunday Times Magazine, a publication Martin loved.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Styles says that he feared whether he would “really miss” making music during his time off.
He added: “Living my life in a way where I could really like who I am away from this world has been so powerful for me.
“Without question that has influenced the work I’m now making because it came from a place of pure freedom. It was important to get away from the image I had of myself.
“Since I was young I’d been seeing this version of me that other people see and that was constantly being mirrored back at me.”
It comes after Styles announced he will release his fourth record Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally on March 6.
Aperture, the album’s lead single and his first single in almost four years, rocketed to number one on the UK Official Singles Chart last month.
The Grammy-winner has also announced a global tour, with dates in London, Amsterdam, New York, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Melbourne and Sydney from May.
Styles’ solo career was launched after he and fellow One Direction members Niall Horan, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson went on hiatus in 2016, almost a year after Zayn Malik left the group.
Payne died at the age of 31 in October 2024 after falling from a hotel balcony in Argentina, and the boyband’s surviving members reunited at his funeral alongside former manager Simon Cowell in November that year.
Styles released his self-titled debut solo album a year after the band’s hiatus in 2017, and followed it up with Fine Line (2019) and Harry’s House (2022), with his debut and third record reaching number one on the UK Albums Chart, while Fine Line reached number two.
As a solo artist, Styles has had two UK number one singles in As It Was and Sign Of The Times, giving him the most commercially successful solo career of the members of One Direction.
One Direction formed in 2010, when they were put together by Cowell on ITV talent show The X Factor.
The full interview can be read in The Sunday Times Magazine and on the newspaper’s website.
