The agency’s founder and guiding light, Henri Cartier-Bresson, had dismissed Parr’s work as being “from another planet” compared with the artists on the roster at the time. The Welsh Vietnam war photographer Philip Jones Griffiths campaigned against his admission, saying: “Anyone who was described as Margaret Thatcher’s favourite photographer certainly didn’t belong in Magnum.” In the end, Parr was admitted by one vote, a sign that the agency was slowly modernising: Parr would go on to serve as Magnum’s president between 2014 and 2017.
