Friday, December 28, 2012

Trent Parke - Minutes to Midnight, a best book for 2013!




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.

At last the book, Minutes to Midnight is due for release this coming January. This Steidl book, 29.5 x 25 cm has 48 tritone plates over 96 pages. I've pre-ordered my copy on Amazon. You can do that HERE.

Street scene, Wiluna WA 2004
Five-metre shark, Cottesloe Beach, WA 2004


Self portrait, Menindee, outback NSW 2003

You can see more of this stunning work on the Magnum produced YouTube clip HERE 


It seems that this new Steidl edition follows a previous less expansive 2005 publication, now out of print, from French publisher Filgranes editions. You can see more on the PHOTOBOOKSTORE page HERE, which includes a video flip through of the book.

4 comments:

Peter Ng said...

Hi!
I was just wondering if you received your copy of this book yet, I ordered my copy via Amazon Canada and I never got it and now it says it's out of stock already and I'm wondering if I should order from Amazon.com and get it shipped here, but I haven't been able to find anywhere that people actually received their copies. Was wondering if it's actually out yet at all.
Thanks!

Chris D said...

I can assure you it was out but it seems like it was mainly distributed in Germany and this was sufficient to sell out...I bought my copy at my local photo book dealer.

Anonymous said...

I MOST accidentally stumbled into Mr Steidl himself and he confirmed to me this book had sold out almost instantly...
so if you're lucky and see a copy GRAB IT!!!

Anonymous said...

The old 1st version of M2M is still available here for a **very** decent price :

http://www.filigranes.com/main.php?act=livres&s=fiche&id=289

And it's better printed than the Steidl edition. The blacks look rich and deep while the 2013 editiion looks washed-out...