Trent Parke Wins W. Eugene Smith Grant

An overflow crowd gathered at the HBO Theater in midtown Manhattan Oct. 27 to view work from the winners of the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography, one of photojournalism's premier awards.

This year's $30,000 grant went to 32-year-old Trent Parke for his project "Minutes to Midnight," which looks at the changing aspects of daily life in the outback towns and modern cities of his native Australia.

Parke's work is as far from the bright and sunny cliches of Australian tourist advertising as one could imagine. The moody selection of black-and-white photography he presented spoke of a mature photographer who has found a unique voice through the play of light and shadow.

© Trent Parke / Magnum Photos. Bathurst, Australia, 1999. Every year thousands of racing car fans make their way to Mount Panarama for the Bathurst V8 car races. Fans camp on top of the mountain creating their own unique forms of entertainment. Holding of for his life, as the guys inside the car hold onto their beers, a man tests his strength as the car speeds around a muddy makeshift mountain track at around 80 kilometres per hour.

"The breadth, strength, passion and originality of his vision won him first place," said James Danziger, director of Magnum New York, in presenting the award. Contacted after the awards, Danziger, who was one of three judges in the contest, stressed that he did not use undue influence to elect Parke, a Magnum nominee since 2002.

"Anybody who was at the presentation who saw his work and heard his talk knows he was absolutely selected on his merits," Danziger said.

In addition to Danziger, the jury consisted of Anna Winand, executive assistant at the International Center of Photography, and Mexico-based photo curator and author Trisha Ziff. Winand, who headed the jury, says Parke is accomplished, committed and needy, three important characteristics for winning the award. "He's a very accomplished photographer, he's very committed to his project and his story, and he will use the grant well," she said.

Parke says Australians have lost much of their innocence since the 2002 terrorist bombings in Bali. Over the next year Parke plans to traverse the rugged countryside in a new 4 x 4 truck (his old one tumbled down a hill into an alligator-infested lake), documenting what he sees as a drastic shift in Australian society.

"It's always been a loose, free lifestyle, but now people are losing that," Parke says. "Security is a lot tighter now ... Really, it's a dark country, and there's a lot of things that haven't been shown."

Parke's slide show included pictures of devastation, both natural and man-made. Landscapes showed trees parched by drought and then incinerated by wildfires. Other pictures showed animals killed by highway traffc. A good number of images featured the cowboys, carnival workers and beauty queens of small outback towns as well as time-lapse pictures from the modern cities.

Each year the Smith Fund also gives out a $5,000 Fellowship Grant to help fund an ongoing documentary work. This year's recipient is Venezuelan-born, New York-based freelance photographer Victor Sira, who won for his project "Points of Entry," which looks at the social and cultural changes brought on by the flow of undocumented immigrants into the European Union. It was Sira's seventh consecutive year applying for the award, and festival organizers commended his determination.

Hungarian photographer and curator Tamas Revesz was also on hand to receive the $5,000 Howard Chapnick Grant, named after the legendary founder of the Black Star agency. Revesz will use the grant to establish a masterclass for photojournalists from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia.

Sponsored by Nikon, the Smith grants were established in 1979 to help photographers who show a commitment to documenting the human condition. The winning project proposals were selected from among 154 entries representing 29
countries.

Finalists for the award include Christopher Anderson, Jodi Bieber, Heidi Bradner, Jason Eskenazi, Henrik Eskildsen, Jan A. Grarup, Todd Hochberg, Kalpesh Lathigra, Tom Stoddart, Martin Weber and Francesco Zizola.

Applications for the next W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography are due July 15, 2004, and may be obtained by sending a self-addressed, stamped envelope with an application request to:

W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund
c/o International Center of Photography
1133 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036