CRIMSON LINE

Born in the Australian steel city of Newcastle, Trent Parke's early childhood memories were dominated by shipyards, smokestacks, and steelworks. Throughout his career, Parke has been fascinated by the transformative powers of light, specifically the ephemeral colors of dawn and dusk. This work explores the multitude of different reds that made him curious about the color crimson. He discovered that the dye used in commercial products is harvested from the crushed and boiled bodies of the female scale insect, the Cochineal—a tiny insect inhabiting prickly pear cactus pads. The book features spectacular imagery of these colors of birth and blood, ranging from the Eagle Nebula to the biological reality of human birth.