Australian photographer Trent Parke has always nurtured a strong interest in the transformative power of light; however. It was the changing hues of dawn and dusk and the diverse and varied shades of red that made him curious about the crimson color, created by harvesting the crushed and then boiled bodies of the female cochineal: a tiny insect that inhabits the pads of the prickly pear cactus and is bred specifically for crimson dye, now primarily used in cosmetics and food coloring.
Scarlet, magenta, orange, and crimson, are the coloured dyes produced by the Cochineal and also seem to feature spectacularly in the colours of creation, as seen in an Eagle Nebula during the birth of a new star and recorded by the Hubble space telescope. These colours of birth and blood Parke also remembers from the bath water, the umbilical cord and placenta, at the birth of his sons.
Life and death, light and shadow, space, time, memory; these are the themes most explored by Trent Parke. Crimson Line carries on his research.
