Fragments of a nightmare

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: In the Indian popular imagination, Australia exists as a space full of adventurous delights whether it is via Hollywood celebrities like Russell Crowe or architectural triumphs like the Sydney Opera House or the exotic geographic landscapes routinely exploited by Bollywood. This is certainly one reason why Indian students’ demand for an education Down Under is reaching record peaks, enrollments having gone up by 51% this year. But an exhibition of Trent Parke’s photos that opened in the capital this week works hard against the established stereotype.

Titled ‘Minutes to Midnight’, the exhibition is on at the AIFACS Gallery from 12-27 July. It is part of Chobi Mela IV, an international photography festival that is coming here via Dhaka and Kolkata. Composed of photos that show the subject country in a grimmer than usual aspect, it was inaugurated here by its High Commissioner John McCarthy. He noted that while “these are not images that you put into travel brochures, … they are recognisably Australian to anyone who has spent time in the country.”

In explaining what moves him to seek out the jagged and desolate aspects of his country, Parke has cited a survey that found 60% of Australians feeling that their relaxed lifestyle had become a thing of the past: “I don’t know what it was like in other countries, but in Australia there was this sense that it’s only a matter of time” before terrorism got to it like it had America on September 11. To track all that was therefore changing across his country, this intrepid photographer packed up his family in a caravan and set out on a journey that would take two years and see him traverse 90,000 km.

Parke is the only Australian photographer to have become a full member of the famous Magnum photo agency. And in a podcast available at this agency’s site, he explains: “This body of works is about the emotion of the time that we live in…like fragments of dreams and nightmares.” How do these fragments counteract established stereotypes?