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Minutes to Midnight

Trent Parke

Minutes to Midnight

Trent Parke

" Even before I start, I had the feeling that Australia was a deeply dark and mysterious. I felt that something was wrong, that we are heading towards a wrong direction. Australia is a country dark! That shit permanent but there is so far away that you do not even hear about in the big cities, wild animals, the racial tensions between whites and blacks, abuse of alcohol and other substances, the harsh treatment of women … I know this is a disk with its droughts, its storms and its poverty. But then there is a form of freedom, feeling of choking persists in certain behaviors. Rural folk live by standards that people in the cities do not understand. But you see, it is precisely these attitudes that have enabled these people to survive for so long. There is no malice, it is instinctive, it’s just a way of being … It is Australia, exactly what I saw. I feel deeply that Australia has reached the end of an era … even if the campaign is still intact, the innocence is gone." (Trent Parke)
Coproducer
Magnum Photos
Released
15/11/2005
Collection
Hors Collection
Format
120 x 165
Broché
20 duo tone photos
32 pages
ISBN : 978-2-35046-041-3
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Trent Parke

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Trent Parke was born in 1971 and raised in Newcastle, New South Wales. Using his mother’s Pentax Spotmatic and the family laundry as a darkroom, he began taking pictures when he was around 12 years old. Today, Parke, the only Australian photo-grapher to be represented by Magnum, works primarily as a street photographer.

In 2003, with wife and fellow photographer Narelle Autio, Parke drove almost 90,000 km (56,000 miles) around Australia. Minutes to Midnight, the collection of photographs from this journey, offers a sometimes disturbing portrait of twenty-first century Australia, from the desiccated outback to the chaotic, melancholic vitality of life in remote Aboriginal towns. For this project Parke was awarded the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography.

Parke won World Press Photo Awards in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2005, and in 2006 was granted the ABN AMRO Emerging Artist Award. He was selected to be part of the World Press Photo Masterclass in 1999. Parke has published two books, Dream/Life in 1999, and The Seventh Wave with Narelle Autio in 2000. His work has been exhibited widely. In 2006 the National Gallery of Australia acquired Parke’s entire Minutes to Midnight exhibition.