Trent Parke: Cue the Sun
A week before the global COVID-19 pandemic took hold in 2020, the Australian artist Trent Parke found himself on a whirlwind road trip across Northern India.
The frenetic photographs in Parke’s new book Cue the Sun were produced while traveling between Agra, Amritsar, Delhi, Dharamshala, Meerut, and Mathura, from fast-moving vehicles, of the outside world as it rushed by, almost as if in a dream.
The people rendered at 1000th of a second are working through the night, pushing towards smartphone-driven modernity.
“I kept feeling as though I could have been in any number of other countries at a given time. Through the windows, I felt the past and future collide. The contradiction, beauty, chaos, and hope. Humanity on the move.” Trent Parke
This highly anticipated artist’s book is constructed as a unique, vast, double-printed concertina, taking you on a fantastical journey through the kinetic Indian night to breath-taking dawn.
About the Author
Trent Parke is one of the most innovative photographers of his generation. He is known for his poetic, often darkly humorous photography that offers an emotional and psychological portrait of his home country of Australia – from the southern outback to its busy beaches. Though rooted in documentary, his works sit between fiction and reality, exploring themes of identity, place, and family life.
Parke was born in 1971 and raised in Newcastle, New South Wales. Using his mother’s Pentax Spotmatic and the family laundry as a darkroom, he began taking pictures when he was around 12 years old. He began his career as a press photojournalist and, in 2007, became the first Australian to become a Full Member of Magnum Photos.
His work has been exhibited widely and is held in major institutional collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, Museum of Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of South Australia, Artbank, Magnum London, and Magnum Paris. In 2015, solo exhibition The Black Rose, premiered at the Art Gallery of South Australia, featuring photographs, light boxes, video, written texts, and books.
Parke has published four monographs, Dream/Life in 1999, The Seventh Wave with Narelle Autio in 2000, Minutes to Midnight, and The Christmas Tree Bucket in 2014.
