SAT 14:00 to 15:00 – STOP LAUGHING – This is England, Henri Cartier-Bresson film screening, with François Hebel and Martin Parr

François Hebel – curator of photography and previous director of the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation in Paris and Arles Photography festival – will join Martin Parr for a special screening of Stop laughing – This is England. The film will be followed by a discussion and questions from the floor.

Stop laughing – This is England is a recently discovered film (20 mins) by Douglas Hickox, made for British television station ITV/ABC screened in 1963. The production offers an entertaining portrait of the English at work and at play in the country’s industrial north through Henri Cartier-Bresson’s images taken in 1962. 

‘The HCB photographs, as well as the commentary, bear an unsettling resemblance to the much-maligned work of Martin Parr, published in The Last Resort in 1986, some 24 years later.’ – François Hebel

After the screening Martin and François will discuss the film, touching on the roles of documentary photography, why the co-founder of Magnum Photos, Henri Cartier-Bresson, was angered by the prospect of Martin Parr joining the agency, and their contrasting styles and practices.