“In the 70s, in Britain, if you were going to do serious photography, you were obliged to work in black-and-white,” master photographer Martin Parr tells TIME. “Color was the palette of commercial photography and snapshot photography.”

For the past forty-odd years, the photographer Martin Parr has trained his eye on all manner of British eccentricity: our Union Jack cupcakes and mock-antique gas fires, our atrocious seaside resorts and apocalyptic garden parties

In documenting his homeland, the British photographer captures its contradictions and ambiguities with a sense of humor.

For almost half a century, the British photographer has captured the diversity and eccentricity of the city of Manchester in northwestern England.

In the title of his newest book from Damiani, Martin Parr suggests: Think of Scotland – and what comes to mind? Perhaps it is the wail of bagpipes held by men donning rich plaid kilts or visions of medieval castles lay in ruins sitting nobly on distant isles. Maybe you see fields of heather spread across the moor, under blue grey skies from which featherlike rain softly falls. Or maybe you dream of Mary Queen of Scots, walking to her death, defiantly disrobing to reveal a velvet petticoat and sleeves in crimson-brown, the color of martyrdom.

The title of Martin Parr’s newest photography book, “Real Food,” which is out from Phaidon this month, makes it sound like the manifesto of a clean-eating, weight-dropping, soul-lifting life-style guru. But the photos in Parr’s collection have no resemblance to the aspirational-rustic stylings that dominate food photography today