Parking Spaces

From 2002–07, Martin Parr photographed the last available parking space in car parks across 41 countries. Using a compact camera, and driven by wanting to express “the individual frustration of finding somewhere to park, but on a global level.” This body of work presents Martin’s methodical approach to the desire for a precious parking space as a banal unifier of the middle classes the world over. What seems both ordinary and universal becomes, through repetition, a typology of desire and frustration.

Plain cover
The book is bound in white flock cloth with its title blocked in gold. A wedding-album formality applied to an everyday subject.

Foil blocking
Detail of the gold foil blocking on the white flock cover — ceremony and tactility elevating the ordinary.

Designed invitation
Each edition included a wedding-style invitation card, signed by Martin Parr, turning ownership into part of the performance.

“Well, this is the most beautiful book ever made ever. Housed within brushed velvet covers and a matching velvet box. A photo document of Parrfection.”

IDEA
“At first glance, his photographs seem exaggerated or even grotesque. The motifs he chooses are strange, the colours are garish and then the perspectives are unusual. Parr’s term for the overwhelming power of published images is “propaganda”. He counters this propaganda with his own chosen weapons: criticism, seduction and humour. As a result, his photographs are original and entertaining, accessible and understandable. But at the same time they show us in a penetrating way how we live, how we present ourselves to others, and what we value.”

Thomas Weski

Parking Spaces treats absence as precious. Parr’s photographs of empty parking bays are framed through the language of a wedding album.

The book and box are bound in white flock cloth with gold foil lettering, a ceremonial choice more often used for rites of passage. Inside, the book rests in a lined presentation case, reinforcing its status as an object to be treasured.

Each edition includes a wedding-style invitation card, signed by Parr. With only 1,000 copies produced, the scarcity of the book mirrors the scarcity of parking itself.

Through these details, banality and frustration are elevated into something to be commemorated, wit and form echoing the photographs themselves.