Background information
"It was the night before Christmas, when all through the house, Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse (...) It was there – while staring into that bright red bucket, vomiting every hour on the hour for fifteen hours straight – that I started to think how strange families, suburbia, life, vomit and in particular, Christmas really was…” (© Trent PARKE)
Content
"The photo book 'The Christmas Tree Bucket' is a modern-day Christmas story with a dark edge. A wordless narrative, PARKE’s story is an ironic take on the typical Australian suburban Christmas. He photographs friends and family, and casts them in a twisted tale that merges fact and fiction. The viewer is left to make imaginative sense of images of barbeques, screaming children, a burning gingerbread house, and even the photographer himself vomiting into the infamous 'Christmas Tree Bucket'. (publisher's note, © Steidl Verlag, 2013)
Book review
"The Christmas Tree Bucket: Trent Parke's Family Album captures the uncanny and surreal air of the holiday season. Perhaps amplified by the oddness of seeing sunburned Aussies barbequing next to tinsel and pine, Parke's images capture an ideal of Christmas somehow familiar and foreign." (© Alexander Ho, in: 'TIME Lightbox, 23.12.2014')
About the Australian Magnum photographer, Trent PARKE (b.1971, in Newcastle, AUS)
Photo books by Trent PARKE
- Format
- HC (no dust jacket, as issued), 28 x 23 x 1,5 cm., 128 pp., color ills., text language: English