Due to Student's Anti-Racism Campaign Martin Parr steps down from the post of artistic director of Bristol Photo Festival

An anti-racism protest by a 20-year-old British student has led the veteran British photographer Martin Parr to step down as the artistic director of the inaugural Bristol Photo Festival.

Mercedes Baptiste Halliday, from Clapham, London, who is a student of University College London, has driven an 18-month protest against a photography book edited and promoted by Parr. The book, Baptiste Halliday says, is “appallingly racist”.

The book is a reissue of the 1969 series called London by the Italian photographer Gian Butturini. The reprint was published as being edited by Parr, and contains many problematic spreads, together with an involuntary street portrait of a black woman published next to a picture of an confined gorilla at London Zoo.


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