Martin Parr: “My colleagues will go to war zones. I’m photographing the leisure time of the Western world”

It must have been terrifying. 'When I first heard the diagnosis, I thought: well, this is it, I'm finished,' he says. 'But thanks to treatment and the drugs I take, I'm okay. I'm perfectly normal, I think. That's your cue to say: "You look great,"' he deadpans.

It has sharpened his sense of his own legacy. 'There are plenty of my colleagues in Magnum who will go to war zones. I'm not going to do that. I'm photographing the leisure time of the Western world.

That's my big lifetime project.'