Arts & Culture

Minutes to Midnight

The result of a two-year road trip around his native Australia, Trent Parke presents an intense and darkly dream-like vision of this vast land

Trent Parke

Trent Parke | Minutes to Midnight Plague of flying foxes in Mataranka. Northern Territory, Australia. 2004. © Trent Parke | Magnum Photos
Trent Parke | Minutes to Midnight A rally car leaves a trail of dust over the open fields of Muresk on leg two of the World Rally Championships. Western Australia. 2003. © Trent Parke | Magnum Photos
Trent Parke | Minutes to Midnight New years eve in Gunnedah. New South Wales, Australia. 2003. © Trent Parke | Magnum Photos
Trent Parke | Minutes to Midnight Flying foxes in the night sky in Mataranka. Northern Territory, Australia. 2004. © Trent Parke | Magnum Photos
Trent Parke Narelle six months pregnant with our son Jem in outback Billabong. Northern Territory, Australia. 2004. © Trent Parke | Magnum Photos
Trent Parke | Minutes to Midnight Opossum jumping from tree in Newcastle. New South Wales, Australia. 2004. © Trent Parke | Magnum Photos
Trent Parke | Minutes to Midnight Portrait of a young girl in Berwick Suburbs. Victoria, Australia. 2004. © Trent Parke | Magnum Photos
Trent Parke | Minutes to Midnight Hunter street, city centre. Sydney, Australia. 2002. © Trent Parke | Magnum Photos
Trent Parke | Minutes to Midnight Birdsville. Queensland, Australia. 2004. © Trent Parke | Magnum Photos
Trent Parke | Minutes to Midnight A man stands huddled under awnings with his tie thrown over his shoulder after running through a thunderstorm. Sydney, Australia. 1998. © Trent Parke | Magnum Photos
Trent Parke | Minutes to Midnight Workers on George street in the city centre. Sydney, Australia. 2002. © Trent Parke | Magnum Photos
Trent Parke | Minutes to Midnight Japanese school children at the Sydney Opera House steps. Sydney, Australia. 2002. © Trent Parke | Magnum Photos
Trent Parke | Minutes to Midnight Five year old Jack watches 'The Simpsons' on television in a caravan. Cairns, Australia. 2003. © Trent Parke | Magnum Photos

Traveling 90,000 kilometers across Australia with his partner Narelle Autio, Trent Parke produced a body of work which he came to call Minutes to Midnight. A book was published and an exhibition was created that toured globally.

The work is both a document of a changing nation, uneasy with its identity and its place in the world, and a work of fiction which when combined suggests the build-up, aftermath and rebirth of an apocalyptic world.

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