Interiors: Kitsch in synch

Photographer Martin Parr keeps a kitsch sensibility well hidden within the middle-class respectability of his home. Lesley Gillilan looks for the irony in his enthusiasms

MARTIN Parr is standing on a chair in his attic bathroom, the upper half of his body lost in the roof void, searching for his collection of wallpaper samples. I sit on the edge of his bath, idly inspecting the decor (plain blue tiles, bottle of Timotei, daughter Ellen's swimming club certificate pinned on the wall above white sanitary ware), waiting for him to pass down the first roll.

When it finally comes, it is one pristine roll of Teletubbies wallpaper, still in its wrapping. The Spice Girls follows. Then Dr Who ("daleks, isn't that fantastic"), Red Devils, Mr Men. A ragged strip of original Beatles, salvaged from a derelict house in Manchester over 10 years ago, is "a classic". So too is vintage England football team ("an absolute gem, look at Kevin Keegan's hairstyle"). Ditto Masters of the Universe, circa 1983.

"This is a good one, look, chips [as in fried potato] wallpaper in washable vinyl. Oh, and here's my favourite, Concorde. Isn't that brilliant?" he enthuses. "It's a long time since I showed anyone this. I don't think Ellen even knows about it."

I tell him that I am honoured, though it occurs to me that the come-up- and-see-my-wallpaper routine is a Parr ploy, to distract me from other, more personal, areas of the domestic environment I have come to see.

After all, Parr makes his living out of the tragicomedy of human foibles, stealing uneasy, often brutally unflattering, moments from ordinary lives. He is one of the best-known documentary photographers of our times. His new work, Common Sense, is being exhibited around the world and two films of his work are scheduled for television screening later this year.

In Signs of the Times, his 1991 BBC2 collaboration with Nicholas Barker, Parr's voyeuristic camera wryly indicted the home decoration decisions of others; exposed people's dreams and failed aspirations, the leatherette sofas, the coffee-table coasters and, indeed, miserable taste in wallpaper.

"I'm very happy to get the same treatment as I give to other people," he tells me. But surely he must be a little wary. The Concorde number might just be a defence; pretension shielded in irony.

I don't think so. There's no mistaking the genuine excitement when Parr rediscovers his stash of special edition Coloroll. And there's no confusion about his motives. "Here's a rhetorical question," he says. "Which will become the more iconic - Teletubbies or Spice Girls?"

He shows nowhere near as much enthusiasm for giving me the routine tour of the impressive Bristol townhouse he shares with his wife, Suzie, 13- year-old Ellen and Bernard, an elderly black cat. "We are very lucky to live in such a pleasant house," he says flatly.

Pleasant seems a terribly understated word for five storeys of Grade II-listed, Georgian crescent in Clifton, Bristol's answer to Hampstead, its green conservation-area views framed by magnificent sash windows.

"We need a large house to accommodate my book collection," he explains. "I've got hundreds of books and magazines." The division of space is indeed heavily weighted in favour of Martin the professional photographer, rather than Martin and Suzie the family. He has a bookish work space in the basement, an "extension of the office" in the spare bedroom, one big office in what would have been the master bedroom.

When the Parrs moved from Liverpool to Bristol 10 years ago, he was looking for a suitable environment to shoot The Cost of Living, his sardonic study of Thatcher's middle classes. Suzie, a speech therapist, was offered an NHS job in Bristol and now works from home. Though warm and friendly in manner, today she is holed up in the spare-room-cum-secondary-office, "handling" Parr's database and answering phone calls, of which there are many.

Beyond the attic the house is wallpaper-free. Parr says the first-floor living-room is "a kitsch-free zone" - I suspect this is a Suzie rule - though I note a Muffin the Mule leather pouffe lurking in a corner.

All the decor is plain, mostly pastel, faintly utilitarian and, he admits, "very middle class". There are yards of blue wool carpet ("we always get wool rather than nylon"), stripped floorboards, red sofas (I counted three), a blue-washed pine kitchen.

What's the bedroom like? I ask, glimpsing white bedclothes and a mobile phone on the floor. "Pretty boring, really," says Parr.

The first-floor back room is "a sort of television room". A nice collection of globes belongs to Suzie. "Generally speaking," says Parr, "I collect the tat, she doesn't. She thinks I'm very conservative."

Parr has an unnerving habit of making an answer sound like a question, and a curious laugh (half braying donkey, half rusty chainsaw). He looks surprisingly ordinary: sensibly corduroyed, shoes in the Start-Rite league. I am not surprised to learn that young Parr, son of a Surrey civil servant ("about as middle class as you can get"), collected coins, stamps and fossils.

"I'm a natural collector, a magpie," he says. "To me, the things I collect now are contemporary fossils." Such as? "Postcards. Magazines. Ephemera. I've got boxes and boxes of ephemera downstairs. Things like my Silver Jubilee National Express bus time-table. Abba soap. A Star Wars fudge yoghurt pot. I love anything tacky. I've also got a collection of unusual things with photos on - beer cans, towels, mugs, that sort of thing. I've got a Beatles toy guitar. I bought it in a jumble sale for 20p."

His favourite piece of furniture is a glass display cabinet (where the Beatles guitar takes pride of place), saved from a closing down shop in Ireland, now prominently positioned between open-plan kitchen and living space. "We didn't know what we were going to do with it when we bought it," says Parr. "But, inevitably, we've since bought things to put inside it."

Apart from Suzie's two shelves of Fifties sunglasses and Barbie dolls, the contents of the cabinet represent the heart of Parr's collection: "moon landing material", space travel, Thatcherism, the M1 (as in motorway memorabilia) and mini televisions (those little plastic Rediffusion tellies that double as 3D picture postcards).

"The idea of television as a modern holder of imagery is gone," says Parr. "And that's what I love about these particular things. They encapsulate the contradictions inherent in the world. They are icons of modernity, yet already they are faded, jaded and old. I am fascinated by the idea that something can be modern and nostalgic at the same time. Specially the moon landing. I can't get over that. It sounds so modern, yet we might never get there again."

Downstairs in the basement, I hang around by Bernard's slightly soiled litter tray while Parr searches for one of his "ephemera boxes" which, once found, reveals yet more forgotten treasures, triumphantly presented. "See, look, a 1976 John Moores catalogue, Spring and Summer. Completely tacky and dated, don't you think? Darth Vader bath bubbles. Silver Jubilee lemonade - I do, generally, try to avoid the Royal stuff, y'know. Souvenir moon rocks. Elvis Presley radio ..."

There is more in the office. "This is a Russian Michael Jackson," continues Parr. "This is a weird doll from Albania. That's my `Mosney' [the Irish equivalent of Butlins] jacket. I have got a Butlins jacket somewhere. Oh, and, this is funny, this is my Thatcher plate. It was awful to have to write out a cheque to the Conservative party, but it really is an absolute classic piece of, um, Thatcherism. I despised her, like everyone else I know did. But you can't get away from the fact that she will be remembered."

I'm suffering from tacky souvenir overkill, when Parr hands me a proof of his latest book, Common Sense. Here is more of the same, in garish saturated colour: a sort of pictorial archive of pink-iced piglet cakes, varnished toenails, dogs in sunglasses, more varnished nails, sticky red lips, chips, boobs, beach bums, the backs of people's heads.

Common Sense is a big production, in which the contents of the just-launched book are showing simultaneously as Xeroxed laser prints in 42 galleries internationally. Parr calls it an exercise in the idea of representation. "It's trying to show how the world is, but coming in close, coming in tight, showing it in a different way ... trying to make it have some sense." The characteristic Parrisms come in the uncomfortable juxtapositions - sun-roasted skin with raw meat, dildos with fingers.

Common Sense is said to be the largest exhibition of work ever held by one artist but there is no sign of it on Parr's office walls. Instead there are black-and-white images by, among others, Chris Killip, John Davies and Tony Ray-Jones. "My one rule," says Parr, "is never to have any of my photographs on my own walls. It's something I always check when I go to other photographers' houses: do they have their own photos on the wall? Never trust the ones that do."

Parr's work, like most of his collections, is kept in boxes, floor-to- ceiling stacks of print boxes. They are labelled "Margate 86", "Salway Races", "West Bay", "Bored Couples" and (from his 1995 book on tourism, Small World) "Safari parks", "Las Vegas", "Florida", "Benidorm", "Holy Land souvenirs".

He now spends a third, sometimes as much as half, of his year, away from home; currently on a "gruelling" international tour of gallery openings. "Suzie and Ellen do occasionally come with me. Most of the time, they choose not to," he says. "I'm restless. And I like the idea of doing more and more things, taking on more challenges, television, advertising, fashion photography. But I don't like spending so much time away. I need a base." He also expresses regret that he doesn't have the time to decorate. "I used to decorate. I decorated the hall myself. Now, we get someone else to do it."

Is he prey to the self-conscious middle-classness of home decoration? Does he care whether other people like it? "Oh, God no, I don't even think about it - though I think Suzie probably does." He pauses. "Occasionally, I do revamp the cabinet, change the display around. And we do turn the light on for dinner parties. Did I tell you? It's a nice light as well as being a glass cabinet."

`Common Sense' (pounds 25, Dewi Lewis) is distributed by Turnaround. The exhibition is showing at The Rocket Gallery, 13 Old Burlington Street, London W1 until 10 April

Parr is surprisingly normal - normal that is, for someone whose work is scarcely gets a mention without attached adjectives such as cruel, cynical, brutal, and exploitative.