Martin Parr's final commissioned work opens at Lacock Abbey exhibition

Lacock by Martin Parr opened at the Fox Talbot Museum at Lacock Abbey, giving Martin Parr’s final major commission a setting that matches the weight of the work itself. The exhibition arrived months after Parr died on December 6, 2025, aged 73, at his home in Bristol after a battle with cancer.

The show runs from June 27, 2026 to June 27, 2027 and was developed with Magnum Photos and the Martin Parr Foundation, with support from the National Trust’s photo printing partner CEWE. That long run is a sign the Trust expects steady traffic from photographers, historians and Parr admirers drawn to the sharp, satirical eye that made him one of modern British photography’s most influential figures.

The location matters as much as the images. Parr first photographed Lacock in the 1980s, so this commission returns him to a place that already sat inside his working life. Lacock Abbey is also one of photography’s foundational sites: William Henry Fox Talbot made an image of a window there in 1835 that is celebrated as the world’s earliest surviving photographic negative. The Fox Talbot Museum builds that history into its remit, covering photography from Victorian times to the present.

The exhibition is being framed as more than a memorial. Alongside the prints, the National Trust will publish a book of the exhibition images with a foreword by Susie Parr, Parr’s widow. A short film made during the project will also be shown, adding context to his final months of work and to his long connection with the village.

For photographers, that pairing of place and late work is the story. Parr’s final commission has not been isolated as a closing note; it has been set inside Lacock’s own photographic origin story, where the earliest surviving negative and a museum devoted to the medium make his last images feel less like an endpoint than a return.