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THE NON-CONFORMISTS By Martin Parr Text by Susie Parr Aperture 168 pages; go duotone images $45
Beginning in 1975, when he was just out of art school, Martin Parr started a five-year documentary study of a fast-disappearing culture in the Yorkshire mill town of Hebden Bridge, England, and the surrounding areas. He was soon joined by Susie Mitchell, an aspiring writer he'd met as a student in Manchester, and who eventually became his wife. As she explains in the introduction to the book, "We started tentatively to document things that seemed to be deeply traditional, or in decline, or both."
Nearly 40 years later, Martin Parr has finally compiled the images in a book. His photographs of farmers, mill workers, coal miners, game keepers, shop owners, henpecked husbands and other subjects are interspersed with stories Susie Parr wrote at the time about some of those same people.
The book's title refers to the local religious identity. Many...