The peculiar bonanzas that were the 2016 Republican and Democratic National Conventions were ripe for a photographer like Martin Parr. Who better than the veteran UK photographer to capture the absurdity of a Republican delegate gladly coddling a Donald Trump action figure? Who better to capture the desperation of Democratic delegates with Obama banners, despite the fact that Obama could not run for re-election? "The actual convention is like a cross between a game show and a pantomime," he says, which made him the perfect candidate when CNN was looking for a photographer for the job. His pictures have now been collected in Martin Parr: Conventional Photography, which is published by Harper's Books (US) in a perfect edition of 538—the exact number of votes in the US electoral college.
