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November 27, 2008
Trent Parke is the only Australian photographer to be a full member of Magnum --though I am not sure what that means these days.
A recent body of work --- online at the Stills Gallery----- is entitled Trent Parkes Xmas Family Album. This body of work is quite different to his earlier Minutes to Midnight about outback Australia. That, and the earlier work, was shot in black and white on a Leica, and was informed by the street photography of Robert Frank in The Americans.
Trent Parke, Christmas Tree, 2008, from The Christmas Tree Bucket, Pigment print
The style of the work in the exhibition, which opened at the Australian Centre for Photography, in Paddington Sydney, on November 21, is that of Kodak family snaps (old kodachromes ) with an edge. After all this is Adelaide where the presence of the repressed exists in the suburban shadows sensed from the dark side of Xmas.
The shift from a Leica, Tri-X and contrasty development to colour and medium format seems to have come with the Coming soon body of work that explored the urban environment in Sydney.
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