Image rights

Not being much of a fan of tennis, I wouldn't normally be bothered about a book on the subject. But Match Point: Tennis - despite its title - isn't, really. Instead, Martin Parr's latest publication finds him touring the Grand Slam tournaments and doing much what he's always done - observing the spectators rather than the spectacle - and is therefore of much greater interest personally. (In this respect, it's a bit like Harry Pearson's The Far Corner, in which the actual detail of the football matches he reports on are almost incidental.)

But, as Parr told the Guardian's Xan Brooks in a recent interview, life is getting tougher for people-watching photographers: "It's becoming more and more difficult to photograph on the street. People are more suspicious. A lot of them think it's illegal and I have to keep telling them that it's not. ... People are more wary. The general drift is towards suspicion." (This is why he's increasingly focusing his attention on events: "If people are engrossed in what they're doing, they have less time to respond.")

This cuts to the age-old ethical issues that can make street photography contentious and challenging - the desire to capture people behaving naturally and unself-consciously means catching them off their guard, which has implications for privacy and respect for personal space. But it also suggests a changing attitude: an increasing anxiety to avoid being photographed by strangers that co-exists with an eagerness to share selfies on social media. How to square the two? By venturing, perhaps, that in the internet era and a culture that is profoundly visual, both are indicative of an increasing concern to retain control over our own image.

In the course of his conversation with Brooks, Parr also revealed he's only taken 60 or 70 pictures that he would consider to be "magic" or "iconic" (there's not much hope for the rest of us, then) and succinctly summed up a body of work that now extends to more than 80 photobooks by claiming that "my one big project is what the rich Western world is up to in its leisure time".

He also took a swipe at those who see photography as a means of effecting social and political change: "This idea that, 'Oh, I photograph war in order to end war.' But you never will. It's impossible. All we are doing is creating entertainment. Hopefully, it will have a serious message, too, but it's not obligatory. Unless you make an entertaining picture, no one's going to pay attention." He's got a point, to a point. "Entertaining" isn't the word I'd use, and there will be plenty of photographers who bristle at the mocking tone of his comments - but ultimately there does need to be something visually or aesthetically interesting for any message to be conveyed.