Master Profiles: Trent Parke

* “Master Profiles” is a series profiling all the great photographers of uncontrolled life. Unlike the rest of the blog, I’m doing these in a straight profile format to make it easy for quick access to facts, quotes and knowledge on all the masters. I’ll also group them together here every time I add a new one.

Profile:

Trent Parke (1971-Present)

Australian photographer known for his way of capturing brilliant light showcasing his home country with a unique vision.

Background:

Born: March 20, 1971 in Newcastle, Australia

Growing up in Newcastle, Australia, Trent started shooting at the age of 12 with his mother’s Pentax Spotmatic, while also using their laundry room as a dark room for developing the film himself. At the age of 13, tragedy hit when he witnessed his mother die from an asthma attack. While devastating, this traumatic event brought him closer to photography and admittedly effected his style of work.

Parke began his career as a press photojournalist and worked for The Australian newspaper. In 1999, he self-published his first book, Dream/Life, which brought a unique vision in the way he captured life around him with brilliant light in a dreamy, contrasty style. Photographers Martin Parr and Gerry Badger said that it was “as dynamic a set of street pictures as has been seen outside the United States or Japan”.

Dream/Life won second place in the 2000 American Picture of the Year Award for photography books and helped lead to his nomination to the prestigious Magnum Photo agency. In 2007, he became the first Australian to be invited as a full member of Magnum Photo, and is still the only member from Australia today. He has also been a member of the In-Public street photography collective since 2001.

In 2003, with wife and photographer Narelle Autio, Parke drove almost 90,000 km (56,000 miles) around Australia, capturing a dark and melancholic portrait of twenty-first century Australia. This work was put together into his book titled Minutes to Midnight, which was awarded the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography. Parke was also a multiple year winner in the World Press Photo Awards over this time between books.

While this earlier work was all shot with black and white film, Parke has since also worked in medium format color, photographing his Australia in rich, saturated color, but with his trademark focus still on brilliant light.

Trent Parke now lives in Adelaide, Australia.

Style:

Painting with Light: Brilliant use of light and ways to capture it in a photo, bringing life to his scenes
Unique vision, finding new ways to capture life
Gritty, contrasty, black & white film and constrasty, saturated color medium format
Dreamy and Melancholic
Photos working in a series over working as a single image, telling a personal story with photography

Gear: Leica M6 / Elmarit-M 28mm / Ilford FP4

Trente’s earlier work was mainly shot with an M6 and 35mm lens, but he later switched exclusively to an Elmarit-M 28mm lens. As for film, Ilford FP4 had been his most used film. Since his black & white work, though, he has also started shooting medium format color with a Mamiya 7.

Quotes:

“You walk around at times thinking the whole world is a painting. Light is my work. That is my defining factor.”

“I use photography as a way to help me understand why I am here. The camera helps me to see.”

“I am forever chasing light. Light turns the ordinary into the magical.”

“You shoot a lot of shit and you’re bound to come up with a few good ones.”

“I shot a hundred rolls of film, but once I’d got that image I just couldn’t get anywhere near it again. That’s always a good sign: you know you’ve got something special.”

“Photography is a discovery of life which makes you look at things you’ve never looked at before. It’s about discovering yourself and your place in the world.”

“I’m always trying to channel those personal emotions into my work. That is very different from a lot of documentary photographers who want to depict the city more objectively. For me it is very personal – it’s about what is inside me. I don’t think about what other people will make of it. I shoot for myself.”

“It’s not enough for me just to be out on the street and shooting people – I need to be trying to push medium of photography as well. I want to create new and interesting pictures rather than stuff that has been seen before.”

“I’m always ‘wired’, always awake, things are always rattling through my mind. I suppose I’ve started to calm down a little bit, but in that first ten-year period that I was on the streets of Sydney I was just manic. Insane.”

“That’s how I approach street photography: watching everything. If I think something might happen, then I will hang around. But most of the time I’m rushing from one corner of the city to another, just looking for stuff.”

“Everything I do is working towards the next book. Books are what drive my work. I am not interested in single photographs.”