After our visit to Derby for the Format Festival there was one artist that particularly stood out to me, Trent Parke is a Australian street photographer who is part of the Magnum photography group. Parke has won a numerous amount of awards for his photography including the world press photo award in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2005.
I have included some examples of his work here, in order to demonstrate what it is that attracts me to Parke's work. Parke is considered to be one of the most innovative photographers of his time, his work consists of his documentation of Sydney streets, he captures the streets in a completely different way to any we have ever seen before.
Parke began to photograph like this when he was 20 years old and first moved to Sydney, at this time he was dealing with a lot of issues on his own such as the lonliness he was dealing with having of moved to Sydney alone and did not know the city very well.
Most documentary and street photographers aim to capture their city quite objectively, and let the city speak for itself, the interesting thing about Parke is that he always tries to channel his personal emotions through his photography. This causes the work to be more personal, instead of just seeing a city scene, we are seeing a city scene seen from a certain perspective. This relates to the gaze in some way, as the viewers of the photographs we have no choice as to what we see, whereas Parke as the photographer is in total control over the gaze. He can choose exactly what we see and how we see it, as I mentioned earlier Parke channels his emotions into his work so therefore if he is feeling depressed he will turn his gaze to scenes within the city that may portray this unhappy feeling.
As you can see from all the examples that I have included Parke's work can take on very different looks and feels. The first selection of images are full of vibrant colour, Parke has really taken advantage of what he had around him here. These images are depicting a very sunny, bright and lively Sydney, full of life and soul, Parke was obviously feeling very positive during this time and wanted the viewers to feel this too through his imagery. The colours are so vibrant within these images they almost look like they have been created digitally, the images jump off the page at you and make you want to be there. I find the way in which Parke uses the available light very impressive, the shadows created help to give the image more depth and feel. This too works well with his black and white photography, these images have a darker more sombre feel to them, and compared to the first set of images show a very different side to Sydney.
I feel that Parke uses his photography in order to deal with his own personal issues, similar to the idea that when you feel sad you like to listen to sad music, when Parke is down he likes to take images that represent this. Perhaps he uses the photography to overcome these feelings and when he looks back over his images it helps him to not go through those emotions again.
I find it extremely impressive that one photographer can create such different but equally beautiful work, such different emotions are brought to the surface when looking at Parke's work, you can really relate to his work and feel what he was feeling at that time.
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