Gallery.Photographer.ru presents
Trent Parke’s (Magnum Photos) exhibition opening
DREAM/LIFE
A 36-year-old Australian Trent Parke is one of the most outstanding photographers of the new millennium. His works can provoke both amazement and dismay by his most intense gaze at the surrounding world. The life Parke sees through the viewfinder is not a mere life but a Dream/Life. Most usual and, even more, ordinary, things turn into fascinating and strange dreams and phantoms of the childhood in his black-and-white images.
Trent Parke worked as a sports photographer in Australia for over 8 years and during that period was keeping a visual diary of Sydney. He used to go out into the streets, catch “bouncing” light and shoot. The result were photographs of the megapolis in its new disguise, weaved from the sun, rains and isolation. Trent Parke’s Sydney is the city of shadows, magic aliens, and strange confessions.
In 1999 Parke produced the “Dream/Life” book himself and was awarded the first prize on the International “Photo of the Year” competition in the USA. In an instant, he became famous.
“Dream/Life” is his key project.
A few facts about Trent Parke:
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- Trent Parke has introduced a unique approach to light in his photography: he totally “whitens” his characters with long exposures, so that they get caught in the backlight. That is what creates the effect of Sydney appearing as some fascinating underworld.
- In one of the published interviews with his fellow photographer Alec Soth, Parke told that he could not afford a babysitter, and had to take along his baby son when going out to photograph. According to Parke, it is owing to the baby carriage, which sets the pace for apprehension of the world, that he can see the things which he would have skipped on his way. Those very things are the center of his photographic universe.
- In 2003 Trent Parke traveled about 90,000 km across Australia. The result of the trip was the series “Minutes to Midnight”, that made him The Eugene W. Smith Grant winner. The National Gallery of Australia (Canberra) bought 30 photographs from the series.
- Trent Parke is the World Press Photo four-times prizewinner and Olympic Committee’s Gold Lens Award two-times nominee.
- In 2007 Trent Parke became a member of Magnum Photos cooperative.
The exhibition will be held September 22 through November 4, 2007.