Trent Parke the Black Rose

TRENT PARKE THE BLACK ROSE

http://www.metromagazine.com.au

ISBN: 978-1-74295-580-3 http://www.theeducationshop.com.au CONTENTS: 3 CURRICULUM GUIDELINES • 4 PHOTOGRAPHY AS AN ART FORM – WAYS OF SEEING • 5 ACTIVITY – PRE-VIEWING QUESTIONS • 8 ACTIVITY – AFTER WATCHING THE DOCUMENTARY • 10 ACTIVITY • 10 PRACTICAL ACTIVITIES • 13 REFERENCES AND RESOURCES

‘Photography is an extension Overview of every thought that I have. Trent Parke is an Australian artist with an international reputation. The medium he works in is prin- It’s almost linked to my hand cipally photography. This documentary about his in a way that it becomes part life and work was made as Parke was setting up a large exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia of you. I don’t think about as part of the 2015 Adelaide Festival. photography as making The exhibition, The Black Rose, is the culmination something for art or making of seven year’s work for Adelaide-based photographer Parke. Featuring his extraordinary photo- it for the walls of a show, it’s graphs, light boxes, video, written texts and books, the exhibition leads viewers through a visual narra- never about that. It’s always tive that explores ideas concerning the ‘meaning of SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015 for me just about finding the life’ on both a personal and universal level. answers to life. That’s what I’m Featuring interviews with Parke’s wife, artist Narelle Autio and Art Gallery of South Australia director looking for .’ Nick Mitzevich, The Black Rose provides a glimpse – Trent Parke into the world of Trent Parke and the factors that inform and shape his work. 2 Curriculum Guidelines

This guide is written to accompany Catherine Hunter’s The Black Rose would be an excellent film to show students documentary film about Trent Parke. The film focuses on in English classes working on a variety of approaches to the most recent exhibition of his work – The Black Rose developing and presenting narratives and personal histories – at the Art Gallery of South Australia. The documentary through juxtaposing images and words to illustrate and re- and this guide offer an introduction to Parke’s work as an create memories. important Australian artist. For Media Studies students the film is a good example By using the online references in this guide, students can of how the work of an artist can best be appreciated and see much more of Parke’s work than can be shown in a understood through an awareness of the artist’s key life half-hour documentary film. experiences. What happened in the past is shown to be integral to the artist’s style and evolving creative output. The program is suitable for middle and senior secondary students as well as tertiary students working in a number Parke’s work invites us to think about how experiences of of Visual Arts and Design subjects, including Photography, death, birth, pain, loss and the passage of time can help as well as students of Media Arts and English. The student us create dynamic and original artistic representations of activities in this guide are essentially linked to the strands these big life issues. of ‘Responding’ and ‘Making’.

Learning opportunities offered through watching the film, particularly in the area of visual literacy, include: - considering how contemporary artists develop representations of themes, concepts and subject matter - evaluating how such representations communicate

artistic intentions and views which students can relate SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015 to their own visual and written work - responding to images and written ideas that create a narrative using a range of presentations - discussing the five major visual themes inThe Black Rose exhibition into which Parke’s work can be grouped: Self-portraits; Home/Childhood; Trees/Plants; Sea/Sea Creatures and The Road/Road trip. 3 THE FILMMAKERS

Director: Catherine Hunter

Cinematographer and Editor: Bruce Inglis

Producers: Catherine Hunter, Julia Overton

Composer: Amanda Brown

Today, with the development of digital technology, many Photography of us may call ourselves photographers, recording people as an art form – and places and uploading images onto our computers and out into the online world. We can crop and adjust our ways of seeing pictures, post them on social networking sites and email them to others; we can create large prints of people and What do I see? I see light. Extra depth, tone and detail. I places to adorn our walls. But, how many of us have an see shapes – triangles, circles, squares – distortions of all eye for seeing and capturing moments and places in a way the above. I see light in black. I see ordinary objects – flow- that makes them more than a straightforward visual record ers, rocks, sticks, foam. Seaweed, light bulbs, oil stains, of what we have seen and where we have been; that turns traffic signs. I see life –Trent Parke photos into truly memorable images that convey something fundamental and even spiritual and emotional about In an age where we are all photographers of a kind – cap- the subject? turing images of people and places on our mobile devices and digital cameras – the work of photographers like Trent Photography is one of the youngest of the visual arts. Parke is a reminder that sets and sequences of images See a capsule history of photography at http://photo.net/ can tell stories across time and place. The organisation of history/timeline. the images re-creates the patterns of our lives. Parke is a storyteller who uses both images and words to document History only began to be recorded on film in 1890 and make sense of his own history and the change and when Jacob Riis published How the Other Half Lives, continuity in his life. Images of Tenement Life in New York City. See: https://www. google.com.au/?gws_rd=ssl#q=how+the+other+half+lives

Despite the enormous changes and developments in photography, some people still do not see photography as an art form as they believe we can all be photographers, capturing and transmitting images using a range of digital devices. It is true that as a result of rapidly evolving developments in technology we can all take pictures, both still and moving, and record moments in our lives. However, producing images that tell a story that is both original and

arresting is quite another matter, particularly when those SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015 images have not been subjected to digital manipulation through technology, but by the way the artist has worked with them in his dark room.

Jeff Carter, an Australian photographer from an earlier era (1928 – 2010), best known for his pictures of country life in Australia, resisted being described as an artist. However, 4 The Black Rose n. {meaning} 1. Death, the darkness of loss

he acknowledged that photos could be artistic creations: name them? • How important is the willingness of the photographer The moment a photographer goes beyond printing a to find interest and beauty in spaces, faces and places ‘straight’ image from the negative, even just by darkening the that others might reject as dreary, ugly or mundane? sky, he is venturing into artistic creation. Most of the images I • How can photographs best be viewed? have produced for publication or display have been en- • In what ways does size matter when we are viewing hanced via the traditional darkroom techniques of cropping, images? burning in, contrast changing and toning’. Jeff Carter • What is the difference between seeing images reproduced in a book, on a phone sized screen, a television As Geoff Dyer, writer and critic, wonders in this film, quot- screen, a cinema screen or on a gallery wall? Have you ing writer Ezra Pound’s definition of literature as ‘news that ever been surprised on seeing a work of art or an im- stays news’, could this definition of literature also be used age you have seen reproduced many times on screen, about Trent Parke’s photography, a mix of visual, still and in its original location, in real time at its real size? moving images and words that transcends traditional ideas • What role does lighting – both natural and artificial – of photography? play in how we see things, record them and present them in public? • How does video art – a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data – (It should not however be confused with television Activity – production or experimental film) offer further creative pre-viewing questions means for expressing ideas and images to an artist? • Why do you think some photographers (and video art- Trent Parke – the Black Rose ists) today choose to work in black and white?

Before watching this film about Trent Parke and his work, discuss some or all of the following questions:

• How do you think family background and early life experiences may inhibit or encourage our creativity to understand and respond to the world through telling stories? • In what ways do place, space and light tend to play an important role in how visual artists present images of

their world? SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015 • To what extent does readily available technology provide us with the means to capture arresting and original images? • Why might some photographers decide not to use digital cameras for their work? • What do you think the expression ‘Ways of Seeing’ means? Do we see things before we use words to 5 Who is Trent Parke? Characteristics of I’ve always seen myself shooting in a way that was just personal. Yes, I document, there’s no digital manipulation to Trent Parke’s work the images, they’re a single moment in time – Trent Parke I only ever photograph in Australia because the things that Trent Parke was born in 1971 and raised in Newcastle, I’ve experienced over my lifetime have a way of coming up New South Wales. Using his mother’s Pentax Spotmatic in my photographs. It’s...a person that you think you might and the family laundry as a darkroom, he began taking know, that I might have seen in a dream – that attracts me pictures when he was around 12 years old. When Trent looking through the negs – Trent Parke was 13, the oldest of three boys, his mother died at home after suffering an asthma attack. This tragedy was • Often shoots in black and white a pivotal moment in his life and the aftermath of loss • Does not shoot digitally informs a great deal of his work. • Element of chance in images • Anticipating things that are going to happen Parke worked as a sports photographer on the Sydney • Selects and sequences images in ways that tell a per- Daily Telegraph where he won numerous awards for his sonal story of time, people and place pictures. • Strong narrative elements • Uses words and his writings to illuminate and enrich In 2003, with wife and fellow photographer Narelle images Autio, Parke drove almost 90,000 km around Australia. • Images tend towards melancholy Minutes to Midnight, the collection of photographs from this journey, offers a sometimes disturbing portrait of twenty-first century Australia, from the desiccated Some of Trent Parke’s earlier work outback to the chaotic, melancholic vitality of life in before the Black Rose exhibition remote Aboriginal towns. For this project Parke was awarded the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Minutes to Midnight is a major narrative work by Parke. In Photography. 2003, with his wife and two young children, Parke set off on a 2 year road trip around Australia. In 2005 this work was Parke won World Press Photo Awards in 1999, 2000, exhibited at the Australian Centre for Photography and sub- 2001 and 2005, and in 2006 was granted the ABN sequently toured nationally and internationally. It is an ambi- AMRO Emerging Artist Award. He was selected to tious and unique record of that journey, presenting a nation be part of the World Press Photo Masterclass in 1999. struggling to create an identity from different traditions and SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015 He has published several books of his work including, cultures. Parke presents a proud but uneasy nation strug- Dream/Life in 1999 and The Seventh Wave with Narelle gling to craft its identity from different cultures and tradi- Autio in 2000. His work has been exhibited widely. In tions. Minutes to Midnight merges traditional documentary 2006 the National Gallery of Australia acquired Parke’s techniques and imagination to create a dark visual narrative entire Minutes to Midnight exhibition. This work is also portraying Australia with a mix of nostalgia, romanticism available in book form through publisher Steidl Books. and brooding realism. This is not a record of the physical See a complete list of Parke’s publications at: http:// landscape but of an emotional one. It is a story of human www.stillsgallery.com.au/artists/parke/ 6 Catherine Hunter This film about Trent arts with the Nine Parke is the most recent Network’s acclaimed anxiety and intensity which, although told from Australia, of Catherine Hunter’s ‘Sunday’ program, she represents a universal human condition in the world today. films about a number of left to work as a freelance Like so much of Parke’s work, this is a record of the emo- artists, some already well- documentary maker tional landscape. In his words it is ‘about my imagination, known and others whose in collaboration with my place and it’s my personal document of my time’. work should be better a small group of like- known. minded professionals. Similarly, The Christmas Tree Bucket is not simply a set of 60 The documentary films Freelance projects photographs; it is a storybook, and the image sequence is made by Catherine have included painters important in building a story and a complete line of thought. Hunter are characterised Sidney Nolan, Margaret by a respect for and love Olley, Wendy Sharpe, The Camera is God (street portrait series) exhibited in 2014 of the process of making Jenny Sages, Roger Law in Adelaide and shown in a darkened room features a wall of art and a belief that (the co-creator of the grainy black-and-white pictures of faces arranged in a grid art and artists are not UK’s Spitting Image), pattern. On each of the other three walls there was a single somehow apart from the Anselm Kiefer, William portrait, blown up to such a size that you had to step back world. On the contrary, Robinson, Jeffrey Smart for the image to resolve itself into something recognisable. artists are deeply and and photographer Jeff crucially engaged in Carter. Most titles have See images and text from these works at: shaping our sense of been broadcast nationally http://www.stillsgallery.com.au/artists/parke/index. place, identity and of on ABC1. ATOM study php?obj_id=series&nav=6 what it is to be human. guides are available as teacher resources at www. Catherine Hunter has metromagazine.com.au/ Illustrating Parke’s stated and deliberate response to ac- worked in the arts as studyguide cepting the role of chance in our lives, The Camera is God a writer, producer and comprises a series of pictures which are the result of set- director for over twenty- Read more about ting up a camera on a tripod on a pedestrian crossing at a five years. After two Catherine Hunter busy intersection of an Adelaide Street. As people started decades of documenting Productions at http:// crossing, Parke pressed the remote control shutter which the full range of the www.artbrief.com.au/ would automatically take about 30 pictures over a four to eight second period.

What is Magnum?

Magnum is a community of thought, a shared human SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015 quality, a curiosity about what is going on in the world, a respect for what is going on and a desire to transcribe it visually – Henri Cartier Bresson

Trent Parke is the only Australian to be made a full member of the Magnum Photo agency. He became a full member in 2007 after a gruelling five year process. In 2002 he was 7 invited to submit a portfolio of photographs.

Magnum Photos is an international photographic coop- erative of great diversity and distinction founded in 1947 by four pioneering photographers: Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David Seymour. Today it is still owned by its photographer members, who with powerful individual vision, chronicle the world and interpret its peoples, events, issues and personalities. Magnum is dedicated to photojournalism and documentary photography.

People appearing in this documentary include: Trent Parke – artist South Australia Narelle Autio – artist and Geoff Dyer – writer and Trent’s partner critic Jem and Dash – Narelle Richard Parke – Trent’s and Trent’s young sons father Nick Mitzevich – Tyran and Grant Parke – Director, Art Gallery of Trent’s younger brothers Activity – after watching the documentary

Respond to the following questions about the material Director Catherine Hunter has selected to create this portrait of Trent Parke and his work.

• Why is this exhibition called The Black Rose? What is the symbolic significance of the black rose for Trent Parke? How did Parke come by the black rose plant? • What was the initial theme of this 7 year project? • ‘When I was doing Minutes to Midnight, I wanted to document the emotional state of the country, not what it physically looked like but what it felt like to be living in that era, at that point of time’ – Trent Parke. Do you think it is possible to document emotional states through the creation of visual images? • How does the nature of this project about Home become more complex as the circumstances of Trent’s life change? • How does Narelle Autio, an artist and Trent’s partner, explain how some of the changes in their lives– where

they lived and having children – changed how they SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015 looked at things and told stories through images and words? • What was the event in Trent Parke’s early life that so profoundly changed how he regarded life and loss and memory? What were some of the factors that made it difficult for him to understand his sense of being adrift? What do you understand by his observation that ‘I 8 guess that’s how I lived my life, you know, time always ‘ungraspable’ provide Trent with new ways of imag- chasing you down’? ing feelings and sensations about life and death? How • In what senses can the experience of working in a does the dream about the big gum tree in the backyard darkroom be understood as magical? of his Newcastle childhood home become the basis for • How did his background as a professional cricketer several powerful images? How does this tree’s exist- help him to understand how to capture those moments ence have special significance in spiritual and emo- on a sports field where something game-changing tional terms for Trent Parke? happens? • What part do the unexpected, the spontaneous and the • How did the 2 year road trip around Australia with his transient play in Parke’s approach to recording aspects partner and children enhance the opportunities for of the world he lives in? capturing places in different lights? • How does the Dianne Tree come together with the • What is the photograph Trent chooses to demonstrate Black Rose as a powerful image of life, loss and love? the juxtaposing of the micro and the macro? • Words and images. Read the following extract from one • How do the Squid Dying, an installation piece and of Trent Parke’s many books of writings, sections of similarly, the sea lion pictures, create a powerful sense which he includes as another part of his visual recollec- of breathing, of birth and death, a universal life cycle? tions, images and memories to tell his story. • How does the recording of dreams as something

The Black Rose n. {meaning} 2. new beginning, a journey into the unexplored SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015

9 The Black Rose n. (meaning) 3. End of a long journey

hearing him talk about how he works encourage you to see more of his work? • Write down three questions you would like to ask Parke about his working method and experiences as a photographer. • Geoff Dyer, a writer who greatly admires Parke’s work, describes his work as having ‘an incredible visual intensity...that it achieves a kind of hallucinatory or very brooding quality’. How do these observations relate to some of the images we see in this film? • Has watching how Parke works and hearing him talk about his approach changed the way you understand how stories can be told through both still and moving This extract accompanies a photo of ‘Mum’s Mirror’, taken images and words? in 2009 at his childhood home in Newcastle, NSW. • Go to the Stills gallery website at: http://www.stillsgallery.com.au/exhibitions/2014/index.php?obj_id=parke While entering the sunroom I notice an ornate mirror on the and look through some of the sets of images repro- adjacent wall in the hallway. duced here from Trent Parke’s body of work. Focus on It looks as though it could have been there forever. two of the themes represented and choose two images There is no vivid visual memory, but for some reason I from each set that you respond to most strongly. Share know it was mum’s. your responses with fellow students. I think about how each day the mirror watched my mother wwbrushing her hair. And how my mother watched her own reflection gazing back. How the mirror observed the subtle changes in her Practical Activities appearance, as time continued to pass. Being a Photographer The days. The years. Is it possible to make a living as a photographic artist, Her lifetime, until her reflection simply ceased to exist. other than working as a commercial photographer (whose

Extract from Book 4, The golden man (Childhood home)

In what ways can written texts enhance the way we respond to visual material?

Activity Endings and Beginnings

• Having watched the documentary, identify which sections you most enjoyed and exchange your impres- SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015 sions and thoughts with others in your class group. • What kind of biographical portrait does Catherine Hunter present of Trent Parke? How telling are the details and images she selects to highlight aspects of his life and work? What sense do they give you of what drives and informs Parke’s work as an artist? • Does seeing Parke’s work in the documentary and 10 © Narelle Autio

work can be very original)? The simple answer is probably have a particular interest and even a skill? NO unless your work is exceptional and sought by galler- • If possible, invite a professional photographer to come ies, corporations and individuals who can afford to collect and talk to your class about what it is like to be a artworks. Being a video artist is probably an even more commercial photographer in one of the areas you have precarious way to earn any kind of living today. It is not so identified. To what extent can being a news or sports much that artwork is not valued but that artists’ work is not photographer working for a local or state newspaper or appreciated in general terms. The costs of equipment for magazine still be a viable career? making and printing images can be considerable. I, Photographer Commercial Photography With the development of digital technology, many of us be- Trent Parke worked as a press photographer for several lieve we can undertake many of these previously outsourced years, photographing sportspeople and sporting events. photography projects ourselves; we can all be photogra- He learned to appreciate the fast paced environment phers; we can all record events, places, social occasions of sports photography, anticipating and capturing the and above all other people and ourselves; we can even use moment, winning several awards from the International our mobile phones to capture, record, alter, Photoshop and Olympic Committee and World Press Photo Awards in transmit images. However, as most of us are also probably 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2005. aware, there is more to the creation of a memorable and interesting image than simply ‘point, shoot and capture’ … Professional photographers are often engaged by a client unless you get really lucky sometimes or just fluke it. who wants photos for a specific purpose. In selecting a photographer, the client will generally be aware of other Remember, it is the eye of the photographer as much as work the photographer has done on other projects. the subject itself that creates an arresting image. What is your conception and how do you intend to bring it to life • Working together, compile a list of some of the occa- visually? We can all go beyond the standard point, frame SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015 sions for which people and organisations might decide and shoot photo by taking a more mindful approach to to use a professional photographer, e.g. for weddings what we do when we take photographs. It’s always impor- and formal family portraits. tant to think about light, colours, angles, approaches, posi- • What other opportunities are available for people want- tion and distance and to experiment with different views. ing to work as a professional photographer, e.g. sports Why do I want to take this picture or record this moment photographer, fashion shoots? in time? What have I got to say that I can best express • How important is it to work in an area in which you through my images? 11 SOMEONE I KNOW

• Choose a student who is prepared to be photo- graphed for this exercise. • Have six people each take 3 photographs of this student. • Send the photographer and subject outside to take their shots. (As before, no directions about angle, range, size to be given) • Allow each person five minutes to take their shot(s). • When all six have completed this activity, project each photographer’s single best selected shot on to a screen, or print them out. • For this exercise, allow the subject to select which photo he or she believes is the best repre- sentation of them. Will they choose the one that is most flattering? • Which image do the group of students prefer? • How many different ‘faces’ does the subject show?

This exercise is designed to show that all of us not only see things differently, but that we also make choices about how to represent what we see; that taking a photo is not like taking an X-Ray or a photocopy, or any other type of facsimile; it is not about accuracy and being definitive, but more about intention, perspective, position, light – the eye The Eye of the photographer of the photographer. It is as much about ‘making’ as ‘taking’, ‘composing’ and ‘creating’ rather than ‘capturing’. Can we know that what we see is the same, or even similar to what someone else sees? We can describe something • Discuss the differences in the images from either exer- to another person but never be certain that we are seeing cise and attempt to account for them. Can some of the the same thing in the same way. differences be attributed to technical equipment and expertise or are they more the result of approach and Try either the My School or Someone I Know exercises. conception of the task – the eye of the photographer?

MY SCHOOL

• Bring your camera to school if you have one that is not on your phone • Choose six people to each take 3 photographs of the exterior of the school. • Send the photographers out one at a time to take their photos. (No directions to be given about size, position etc) • Allow each person ten minutes to have a look around outside and select their preferred position

and shot(s). SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015 • When all six have completed this activity, project each photographer’s single best chosen shot on to a screen, or print them out in a dark room or digitally • Has everyone chosen a similar position and approach? Discuss the various results.

12 References and Resources Trent Parke’s work is held at the following public galleries: 24th January 2015 http://www.artgallery.sa.gov.au/agsa/home/ Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne Learning/docs/WeekendAustralian_150124_ Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Melbourne TrentParkeMasterOfLight_364434814.pdf Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Geoff Dyer is a writer and critic with an interest in pho- National Gallery of Australia, Canberra tography who appears in this film. His own books are National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne idiosyncratic and challenge notions of what fiction is Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney and what non-fiction is. Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney The Ongoing Moment: A Book about Photographs, University of Sydney Union, University of Sydney Geoff Dyer, UK, Little Brown, 2005 The Black Rose is at the Adelaide Art Gallery until May 10th, First published in 1977, this is a collection of essays about 2015. The exhibition catalogue includes text by Trent photography Parke and essays by Julie Robinson and Maria Zagala On Photography, Susan Sontag, Farrar, Strauss and http://www.artgallery.sa.gov.au/agsa/home/Learning/ Giroux, reprinted 2011 TrentParkeTheBlackRose The student study guide can be accessed at: http://www. Trent Parke – Minutes to Midnight, Steidl Publishers, 2013. artgallery.sa.gov.au/agsa/home/Learning/docs/Online_ In 2003, Trent Parke began a road trip around his na- Resources/TP_Ed_resource_Final.pdf tive Australia, a monumental journey that was to last A photographer outlines what he has learnt about street two years and cover a distance of over 90,000 kms. photography from Trent Parke’s work Minutes to Midnight is the ambitious photographic http://erickimphotography.com/blog/2014/02/10/12-les- record of that adventure. sons-trent-parke-has-taught-me-about-street-photog- View a number of images from Trent Parke’s body of work raphy/ at: A really interesting interview with Trent Parke by Benjamin http://www.stillsgallery.com.au/exhibitions/2014/index. Chadbond and Patrick Mason in Try Hard magazine php?obj_id=parke http://tryhardmagazine.com/an-interview-with-trent-parke Sharon Verghis, Master of Light, the Weekend Australian,

The author of this guide acknowledges the work of the Art Gallery of South Australia who prepared several excellent educational resources to accompany Trent Parke’s Black Rose exhibition at this gallery in 2015. Julie Robinson, Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs and Maria Zagala, Associate Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs at the Art Gallery of South Australia produced a comprehensive student study guide – Trent Parke: The Black Rose – to accompany the exhibition and have also contributed essays to the exhibition catalogue. This guide draws on some of that information. All images in this guide © Trent Parke (unless otherwise indicated).

For information on SCREEN EDUCATION magazine, or to download other SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015 study guides for assessment, visit . Join ATOM’s email broadcast list for invitations to free screenings, conferences, seminars, etc. Sign up now at . For hundreds of articles on Film as Text, Screen Literacy, Multiliteracy and Media Studies, visit . 13