The Camera is God, a series of ethereal street portraits shot by Trent Parke on an Adelaide street corner last year, will be exhibited at Stills Gallery in Sydney from 26 March to 3 May 2014.
Typical of Parke's style, steeped in photojournalism and spurning all digital manipulation, the images were taken on 35 mm film and use multiple exposures to create what the gallery calls, "a complex and shifting picture of contemporary Australian life."
"From far away, some are recognisable, only to evaporate into a pattern of grain close up. Others have faces, which have echoed and slipped away from their body."
Parke created the portraits of his subjects at the pedestrian crossing on the corner of King William St in Adelaide, by taking up to 30 images over an 8 second period.
The resulting ghostly black and white images have been enlarged to create an installation around the gallery walls, "turning the tables on who in the gallery might be the viewers and the viewed."
Speaking to The Guardian this year, Parke explained his rationale for the series and it's inherent spiritual feel:
"I wanted to represent the transience of the street, where you're there for a split second and then you're gone. Or when you have a dream about someone you don't know, and when you wake up and try to remember them, you can't grasp that hard outline of a person's face."
Parke is the only Australian member of the prestigious Magnum Agency for photojournalism, winning the inaugural Prudential Eye Award for Photography in Singapore in January this year.
The Camera is God premiered at the 2014 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art and will make it's Sydney debut at the Stills Gallery in Sydney, 36 Gosbell Streey Sydney, Paddington, from 26 March to 3 May 2014.
No. 447 Candid portrait of a child on a street corner, 2013. From The Camera is God (street portrait series)
Pigment print (145 x 110cm).
No. 827 Candid portrait of a man on a street corner, 2013. From The Camera is God (street portrait series). Pigment Print (145 x 110 cm).