Trent Parke

Trent Parke was born in Newcastle, Australia in 1971. He is the only Australian photographer to be in the prestigious Magnum group. Parke has gained awards for his photography nearly every year 1996 to 2005. He won the prestigious W Eugene Smith Award for humanistic photography in 2003 because of his journey around Australia. 



This image was taken in Australia in 2006. It looks like this image was taken in a car park to a shop. I think this because of the large number of trolleys, the model in this image is dressed quite formally suggesting that it is her uniform, also there is the car in the foreground. Parke has used the brown fence to split the image in half and make the main subjects stand out because of their light tones. A brown tone is constant through the image from the car, dirt on the ground, the fence, the house and the tree. Blue sky helps the tree and the house define itself against the rest of the brown and grey. On the boot of the vehicle there is a reflection of above the fence creating another distance to the image. I think that this factor may explain why Parke has used a small aperture so that he can get all the detail. The sky looks fairly clear suggesting that only natural light was used. I think that the sun was positioned to the left due to the shadow across the fence and behind the model. Nearly all the trolleys point towards the model which isolates her as the main subject.

This image was also taken in 2006 in west Australia. Parke has used a dynamic contrast of the shadows primarily on the left however there is some under the canopies down the street. This shadow is made by natural light and large buildings that are out of frame. Several colours have been used especially tones of blue and red. A large amount of this image is in focus suggesting that Parke would have had to use a small aperture.