Parr calls the shots

With the acclaimed retrospective of Martin Parr's three-decade-long career currently under way at the Barbican, this exhibition of his recently completed project, for which he spent three years photographing people using their mobile phones, couldn't have had a more timely opening.

The show, comprising 20 perspex-boxed photographs from the full series of 141 images, sees Parr going over thematically familiar but still oddly intriguing ground.

Still best known for his late 1980s exhibition and TV documentary Signs Of The Times, in which his naive victims proudly displayed and discussed their often hilariously tasteless choices in interior decor, The Phone Book similarly mocks the fashion afflicted. For example, there's the Austrian man chatting into his cuddly bunny-covered phone, the Chinese girl with matching pink mobile, lips and eye shadow and the Belgian wearing his sunglasses on the back of his head while chatting into his handset (pictured).

It's not all snide, though: Parr's photographs of New Yorkers using their phones after September 11 - which sent sales of mobiles in the US through the roof - provide the exhibition with an unexpected element of pathos.

To accompany the exhibition, the gallery has produced a limited edition tome, The Phone Book. Conceived as 'a novel, anti-coffee-table book', it's printed on the same paper as the telephone directory and contains all 141 photographs in the series.

Martin Parr: The Phone Book is on until 18 May, Rocket,13 Old Burlington Street W1, Tue to Sat 11am to 7pm, free.

Tel: 020 7434 3043
Tube: Green Park