Trent Parke: Minutes to Midnight - (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

In 2003, Trent Parke began a road trip around his native Australia, a monumental journey that was to last two years and cover a distance of over 90.000 km. Minutes to Midnight is the ambitious photographic record of that adventure, in which Parke presents a proud but uneasy nation struggling to craft its identity from different cultures and traditions. Minutes to Midnight merges traditional documentary techniques and imagination to create a dark visual narrative portraying Australia with a mix of nostalgia, romanticism and brooding realism. This is not a record of the physical landscape but of an emotional one. It is a story of human anxiety and intensity which, although told from Australia, represents a universal human condition in the world today.

Review Quotes

"Minutes to Midnight is an apocalyptic book, but they are real documents, they're real events, real moments in time that have happened," explains Magnum photographer Trent Parke. Shot over the course of two years and covering over 90,000 km, Minutes to Midnight is a seductively dark, black and white, enigmatic narrative of Parke's homeland of Australia.--The Editors "Juxtapoz"

First published in 2013, Minutes to Midnight sold out the day it was released. And with good reason: Trent Parke, author of the extraordinary The Christmas Tree Bucket, is one of the most talented Magnum photographers . His color and black-and-white photographs can be wild, poetic, ultra-realistic and mysterious, as seen in this reissue featuring ostensibly unrelated observations made during his 90,000-kilometer road trip across his native Australia in 2003. Parke documented the journey in a highly ambitious way, presenting a nation struggling to forge its own identity out of several unique cultures. Combining nostalgia, romanticism and realism, Minutes to Midnight shows an intense and anxious Australia. This dark visual tale is touching one moment and disturbing in the next.--Jonas Cuénin "L'Oeil de la Photographie"