A Highly Subjective Index of Minutes to Midnight by Trent Parke

This index of Trent Parke’s Minutes to Midnight is in preparation for a review of this great work published in 2013. Trent Parke saved up for 5 years to go on a road trip of Australia. During that time his partner got pregnant and birthed their son – both moments viscerally captured. Trent Parke used a high contrast black and white film with very rich, dark tones. Here is the index.

1. Moths to light
2. Children all with balloons except for one
3. Beauty pageant contestants on cars
4. Motion blur of pedestrians et alia on George St.
5. A crowd
6. Club Hotel Wiluna
7. Aboriginal community? Some people lying on the pavement like dogs / with dogs.
8. Diving into a reservoir
9. A dragon fly caught on a spider web
10. Guys driving in a car with an open beer container
11. Kid’s wrestling
12. Festival at night: XXXX Land
13. Crowd under tree roots, motion blurred… has a Prometheus aesthetic
14. Woman with infant; motor bike
15. People at a beach; some reconnoitering from afar
16. Dead cockatiel on road
17. Child in a field
18. Sydney Harbor with a blistering, lithium-like light reflected
19. Soap bubbles in plaza
20. White silhouette (famous photo)
21. Street on a rail line
22. Car covered in a white tarp (Robert Frank homage)
23. White linens on a clothesline at night
24. Child watching TV at night
25. Overview / Aerial of a car kicking up dust through a curve in the road
26. A marsupial jumping through the trees at night
27. Man in the garden with leaves floating about (prelude to alien abduction)
28. Spider webs, brush, twigs, barbed wire
29. Horses at Twilight (ocf)
30. Child with bloody elbow, screaming
31. Dog with dead furry creature in mouth
32. Bats with wings in flight back lit
33. Two page spread: grainy silhouettes in park
34. Burning kangaroo corpses
35. Tree stumps
36. Couple sleeping in the back of a pick up truck
37. Dead, marsupial fetus
38. Two page spread – black
39. Night: bright white silhouette amongst leafless trees
40. Raining on farm hands
41. Kissing in a mosh pit
42. Jellyfish
43. Swimming / underwater
44. Pregnant woman underwater
45. New born in water
46. Swing set with children at night
47. Bats flying at night (long exposure with light trails and motion blur)