Tangerine Dreams by Sophie Green

June 4 - September 6, 2026

Rituals of belonging in contemporary British life

British documentary photographer Sophie Green unveils Tangerine Dreams, a striking and immersive exploration of the communities, subcultures, and collective rituals that define contemporary Britain. Developed over more than a decade, the project examines how shared traditions foster identity, belonging, and human connection across diverse social landscapes. This vibrant body of work will be presented in a free exhibition at the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol, on view from June 4 to September 6, 2026.

At the heart of Green’s practice lies the idea that British identity is constantly evolving—shaped by those who inhabit it today. From the high-impact spectacle of banger racing to the charged atmosphere of traveller horse fairs, from Aladura church gatherings blending worship with Nigerian culinary traditions to the expressive world of modified car culture, her images reveal the emotional intensity and cultural richness of these environments. Irish dance halls, British cowboy festivals, and other unexpected social spaces further highlight a nation defined by plurality, creativity, and lived experience.

Irish Dancer, Kent Championships, Kent, UK. From the series Fast Feet & Feis, 2022. © Sophie Green. Courtesy Martin Parr Foundation

Yet Tangerine Dreams also captures communities facing increasing vulnerability. Urban development, regulatory pressures, and social marginalization threaten the survival of many long-standing traditions. In this context, communal gatherings become more than celebrations—they act as forms of cultural resilience. While photography cannot prevent change, Green’s work creates an enduring visual archive of these fragile yet vital spaces.

Through an empathetic and collaborative approach, Green builds long-term relationships with her subjects, often returning to the same communities over many years. This sustained engagement allows for nuanced storytelling shaped by trust and participation. Her eleven-year documentation of banger racing, alongside extensive work with faith groups and subcultures, reflects a deep commitment to documenting Britain from within.

Visually, the series stands out for its bold, saturated palette and dynamic compositions. Combining portraiture, still life, and observational detail, Green constructs a layered narrative that challenges conventional representations of British life. Her use of vivid, almost surreal color underscores both the humor and humanity embedded in these scenes, offering a fresh and contemporary perspective on everyday rituals.

The title Tangerine Dreams evokes a sense of shared energy and emotional intensity—capturing fleeting moments of joy, introspection, and connection. Originally released as a self-published photobook in 2025, the first edition sold out within a week, with a second edition scheduled to coincide with the exhibition.

In parallel, the exhibition introduces a preview of Green’s ongoing project on death rituals across multicultural Britain. This new body of work includes rare documentation of funerary practices, even featuring a unique commission to photograph the funeral of Martin Parr. These images extend her exploration of community by focusing on mourning, remembrance, and the transmission of cultural heritage.

By addressing themes of life, death, and collective memory, Sophie Green’s work offers a powerful reflection on what it means to belong in modern Britain. Tangerine Dreams ultimately presents a visually compelling and socially resonant portrait of a nation shaped by its people, their traditions, and the connections that bind them.

Events:
June 4: Exhibition Opening – Tangerine Dreams, Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol
June 17: Artist Talk & Book Signing with Sophie Green, Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol

Emily, New Brighton Beach, Liverpool, UK. From the series Beachology, 2020. © Sophie Green. Courtesy Martin Parr Foundation

Elise & Sienna the Yorkshire Terrier, Bath Canine Society Dog Show, Bath, UK. From the series Doggy Style, 2021. © Sophie Green. Courtesy Martin Parr Foundation

ABOUT SOPHIE CREEN
Sophie Green, a London-based British documentary photographer (b. 1991), has dedicated over a decade to exploring the margins of British culture. Through her lens, Sophie has focused on communities and subcultures tied together by shared identity, heritage, and tradition. Her work uncovers the rituals and idiosyncrasies that unite individuals, highlighting how collective practices preserve cultural traditions and strengthen identity. Known for her bold use of colour, graphic detail, and moments of humour, Sophie merges documentary realism with stylised compositions, balancing portraiture and still life to reveal her subjects’ deeper narratives. Many of her projects evolve over several years, allowing her to foster meaningful, long-term relationships with the communities she documents.

Tangerine Dreams is her third book, following the publication of two earlier books, Dented Pride (2016) and Congregation (2019). Her work has been exhibited internationally at institutions such as The National Portrait Gallery, the V&A, and Somerset House. Her accolades include The Magnum Photos/Photo London Graduate Photographers Award and the Creative Review Zeitgeist Award, along with nominations for the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize and the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. She has photographed for The New York Times, Financial Times, The Guardian, Vogue, and many more.
www.sophiegreenphotography.com
@sophiegreenstudio

Lady in Hair Steamer, The Make Over Salon, Peckham, London, UK. From the series Wefts & Tracks, 2016 © Sophie Green. Courtesy Martin Parr Foundation

ABOUT MARTIN PARR FOUNDATION
Martin Parr Foundation supports emerging, established and overlooked photographers who have made, and continue to make, work focussed on Britain and Ireland. The Foundation runs a programme of events, workshops and exhibitions in their gallery and event space. It holds a growing collection of significant photographic books, book dummies, prints, magazines and the archive of Martin Parr (1952-2025). The Foundation works to preserve, celebrate and share Martin’s legacy. The Foundation strives to make photography engaging and accessible for all and to reflect the diversity of British and Irish culture.

Horsey Hat, Ascot Racecourse, Ascot, UK. From the series Pedigree Power, 2016 © Sophie Green. Courtesy Martin Parr Foundation

Martin Parr: The Last Resort: 40 Years On

By Martin Parr

Publisher : Dewi Lewis Publishing & Martin Parr Foundation

2026 | 60 pages

"The pictures from The Last Resort still hold up brilliantly. If I ever reach the Pearly Gates, those are the ones I’d probably pull out first!" – Martin Parr

Published in collaboration with the Martin Parr Foundation, this special edition accompanies a tribute exhibition at the Foundation’s Bristol gallery, honouring Martin Parr following his passing in December. Shot in and around the English seaside town of New Brighton between 1983 and 1985, The Last Resort remains a landmark in British colour documentary photography, establishing Parr as one of the nation’s most influential photographers.

This volume presents a carefully curated selection of images from the iconic series, alongside extensive archival material, including contact sheets, photographs, and ephemera drawn from Martin’s personal collection. Isaac Blease, Archivist at the Foundation, provides insight into the project’s origins, exploring the artistic and cultural influences that prompted Parr’s shift from black-and-white to colour photography, as well as the series’ initial exhibitions in Liverpool and at London’s Serpentine Gallery.

Peter Brawne, designer of the original 1986 book, reflects on the creative process behind the design and his collaboration with Martin, while Susie Parr, Martin’s wife, contributes a personal account of New Brighton and the first public presentation of the work at Liverpool’s Open Eye Gallery in 1985.

Richly illustrated and thoughtfully contextualized, this book offers both longtime admirers and new readers a unique glimpse into the development of Martin Parr’s iconic vision and the vibrant world of British seaside life that inspired it.

All About Martin Parr

Nathalie Rubens: Seasons of Time

By Nathalie Rubens

Publisher : Kehrer Verlag

2026 | 112 pages

Nathalie Rubens: Seasons of Time marks a thoughtful and intimate debut, tracing the subtle thresholds that define a woman’s life. In this carefully composed photobook, Nathalie Rubens reflects on two parallel passages: her daughter Ruby’s emergence into young adulthood and her own transition into post-menopausal life. Through this mirrored gaze, the work becomes a meditation on continuity and change, revealing how beginnings and endings often unfold side by side.

Rubens turns the camera inward and outward with equal tenderness. Portraits of Ruby capture the fragile confidence and uncertainty of youth—moments poised between dependence and independence. In contrast, self-portraits confront the physical and emotional transformations of midlife with quiet candor. The images resist sentimentality; instead, they dwell in nuance, acknowledging vulnerability while affirming resilience. The body, in its evolving forms, becomes both subject and witness to time’s passage.

Domestic interiors, shared gestures, and fleeting glances anchor the book in lived experience. Light filters through windows, falls across skin, and settles on everyday objects, creating a rhythm that echoes the seasons invoked in the title. Rubens approaches aging not as decline, but as a shifting landscape—one marked by introspection, memory, and renewed self-awareness. The dialogue between mother and daughter unfolds without hierarchy, suggesting that each stage of life carries its own clarity and its own mystery.

Deeply personal yet widely relatable, Seasons of Time speaks to the universality of transition. It honors the complexity of female identity as something neither fixed nor singular, but constantly in motion. Through measured composition and emotional honesty, Rubens crafts a visual reflection on growth, separation, and connection. The result is a quiet affirmation that time, though relentless, can also be a source of understanding and grace, binding generations even as it gently transforms them.

Jon McCormack: Patterns: Art of the Natural World

By Jon McCormack

Publisher : Damiani

2026 | 168 pages

The structural organization of the biosphere is the primary subject of Patterns: Art of the Natural World, a comprehensive visual catalog by Australian photographer and conservationist Jon McCormack. The work operates on the premise that life and geology are governed by a shared geometry, manifested in the recurring arrangements found within botanical specimens, animal migration routes, and topographical transformations. McCormack utilizes high-resolution digital sensors to isolate these rhythms, presenting a data-rich look at the physical world that spans from the macro-scale of elephant trails in the Kenyan savanna to the micro-textures of fossilized feathers. This survey functions as an empirical record of the planet’s innate design, emphasizing the mathematical consistency of natural forms across disparate ecosystems.

The geographical scope of the project encompasses a wide range of extreme environments, including the volcanic coastlines of Iceland and the sub-zero fjords of Antarctica. McCormack documents the silent, systemic logic of the earth, such as the intricate symmetry found within the ice caves of Svalbard and the rhythmic branching of tree rings. A significant portion of the archive focuses on the photographer’s local environment in California, where the interplay of desert erosion and coastal tides provides a laboratory for studying the evolution of landforms. By removing the distraction of color in certain instances or utilizing flat lighting, the imagery highlights the "technofossils" of the natural world—the enduring structures that define the history of a landscape and its inhabitants.

Supplementing the visual evidence are a series of short essays penned by a multidisciplinary group of scientists and explorers. These texts provide a theoretical framework for the photographs, explaining the biological and physical forces that generate specific patterns, such as the fractals in river deltas or the hexagonal tiling of basalt columns. This collaboration ensures that the book remains a rigorous journalistic inquiry into the interconnectedness of life rather than a purely aesthetic exercise. As ecosystems face unprecedented pressure from climate instability, Patterns stands as a definitive document of the planet’s foundational architecture, recording the complex symmetries that underpin global biodiversity before they are irrevocably altered by human intervention.

Albert Watson: Kaos

By Albert Watson

Publisher : Taschen

2026 | 408 pages

Albert Watson: Kaos is a masterful survey of one of photography’s most influential voices, spanning five decades of work that oscillates between intimacy and spectacle. Watson’s photographs are at once meticulously composed and viscerally immediate, capturing both the iconic and the unexpected with equal authority.

KAOS charts Watson’s journey from his breakthrough Alfred Hitchcock portrait in 1973 to the present, revealing the astonishing range of his vision. Across its pages, readers encounter a kaleidoscope of subjects: celebrities in revealing vulnerability, strangers in fleeting urban moments, wildlife in arresting stillness, and landscapes that shimmer with elemental power. Each frame is a study in light, shadow, and narrative tension, embodying Watson’s extraordinary ability to render the familiar as extraordinary.

The book moves fluidly between worlds. Supermodels and pop icons—David Bowie, Kate Moss, Jay Z, Jennifer Lopez, Mick Jagger—sit alongside anonymous figures in neon-lit cities and remote Scottish landscapes, their presence amplified by Watson’s uncanny sense of timing and composition. From sensuous nudes to stark urban street photography, his work explores surface beauty while hinting at the emotional and psychological depth beneath. Watson’s camera captures not only what is seen, but the subtle textures of human experience: desire, humor, solitude, and magnetism.

Accompanied by an essay from Philippe Garner and enriched with Watson’s own reflections, as well as previously unpublished Polaroids from his personal archive, KAOS is both an authoritative career retrospective and a deeply personal document. The photographs pulse with cinematic allure, formal precision, and the irrepressible vitality of a life spent observing the world in its most dynamic and intimate moments.

Presented in a sumptuous hardcover, with optional signed Art Editions including exclusive prints, Albert Watson: Kaos is a definitive celebration of an artist whose work continues to inspire photographers, collectors, and enthusiasts around the globe, capturing a universe simultaneously chaotic, poetic, and utterly compelling.

Tangerine Dreams by Sophie Green

June 4 - September 6, 2026

Rituals of belonging in contemporary British life

More information about the exhibition

Selected Books