At the turn of the millennium, the photographer Martin Parr edited a book of pictures of—though not by—himself. Titled Autoportrait, its contents were culled from a collection amassed over years of travelling. At each stop, he would have his picture taken by a local photographer, or sometimes duck into a photo booth. The resulting shots are uniformly kitsch, each inflected by the local aesthetic—or rather, the local tourist aesthetic. Parr is garbed like a sheikh in Abu Dhabi. In Funchal in Madeira, he stands with his hands jammed in his pockets against a painted woodland scene. A monkey in polka-dot shorts rides his forearm in Benidorm. With each page turned, Parr’s identity seems to grow more blurred.

On a squally day at the end of last year, I was able to study Parr for myself. Dressed in greyish beige, with brown leather clodhoppers, he looks like a geography teacher