![]() To start off, Trent Parke shares some of his thoughts on “Minutes to Midnight” - and the meaning behind it for him: But, to be honest, I don’t really realize all this when I am shooting because the stuff inside me and the stuff outside me kind of flows through me into the pictures … Most of the time I’m in another world. They have this kind of dark, dreamy quality and I suppose that was what I was trying to evoke. Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead and those sorts of bands and their cutting-edge film clips have influenced me. Music videos have been great … There is this Icelandic group Sigur Rós – their music is just very sad and melodramatic. “I’ve been influenced by all sorts of things. Parke also shares some of his outside influences which informs his darker, dreamy vision: I think people can relate to this work in many ways.” ![]() So I found I was using this symbolism to tell a much bigger, epic story of the world through pictures made specifically in Australia. The bigger picture things: terrorism, racism, poverty, natural disasters and the struggle to survive. “But even with work like Minutes to Midnight that’s so much about regional and remote Australia there’s lots of things that could relate to the wider world. Parke shares some big themes he worked on in “ Minutes to Midnight”: There’s no malice in it – it’s just instinct. But then you come to realize that it’s just the way people survive and have done for so long. People in the outback live by standards that city people would never understand. And while there is a kind of freedom to it, there is also a stifling sense of inevitability. “Australia is a hard country with the droughts and the firestorms and the poverty. Parke also shares his personal thoughts on Australia, and the social inequalities and injustices: Certainly it did seem a very different place from the Australia I had grown up in 20 years earlier.” A report that said that more than half of Australians felt the country had lost its innocence. In the end it was an article I read in a newspaper that finally got me going. I sensed somehow something wasn’t quite right out there and I wanted to go see for myself. “I’d been saving up for five years to make a long road trip around Australia. When it came to work on “ Minutes to Midnight“, Parke saved up a lot of money (and felt a lot of personal images) before creating the body of work: How Trent Parke Created “Minutes to Midnight” I wanted to write this article sharing my thoughts on the book, why I think it is a great body of work, and I hope you find this article useful. I currently have my copy of “Minutes to Midnight” in my street photography library- and it is one of the most precious black and white books I own. It is hard to find copies that aren’t sold out, you can currently get some more pre-orders on Amazon.įor the Steidl re-print, there has been a slight change to some of the images, formatting, and printing (all in a positive way). Steidl has recently re-published “ Minutes to Midnight” - and it has been a massive hit. ![]() It inspired me to write my first article on him: 12 Lessons Trent Parke Has Taught Me About Street Photography. But when I did- I was blown away by Trent Parke’s incredible story-telling, visuals, and vision. I’m not 100% sure how I stumbled upon the book: “ Minutes to Midnight” by Trent Parke.
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