Meet Bec
Bec Parsons’ lens is unmistakably human. The Australian born / English artist is drawn towards human connection, placing emotional intimacy at the centre of her practice, and defined by her immediacy to the subjects with a rare emotional sensitivity, allowing vulnerability and presence to emerge naturally.
Bec has developed a visual language that feels both timeless and emotionally charged. Her debut book published by Perimeter Editions 'Conney Island' Chronicling close friend and Model Julia Nobis, is an exploration of the underlying affinity between artist and model is one of the fundamental constructs informing our reading of fashion photography and its wider diaspora of sensibilities and genres. Technical or conceptual nous are simply not enough on their own. Rather, it is the unspoken, the intuitive and the collaborative dynamic between photographer and subject – the creative bond, however fleeting – that breathes life into the image. Bec Parsons has made an international career off the back of her unique ability to connect. Photographed in the early Spring of 2012 in New York City, the images that populate her debut book Coney Island not only capture a young Julia Nobis amidst the idiosyncratic surrounds of the beachside Brooklyn neighbourhood from which the book takes its title, but burrow somewhere deeper into model photographer’s mutual disposition and spirit. Among these concise, intimate and playful portraits, images of lush blossoms circulate. The allegory is clear. At this most pivotal moment for Nobis – then on the cusp of international fashion stardom – we don’t simply observe her transition from an aloof distance. Instead, Parsons ensures we wander with her.
Following on from her debut publication, Parsons’ latest book for Perimeter Editions, Lone Dove, takes this collaborative quality to new depths. Shifting her gaze to young rodeo champion Lauren Devaney, Parsons joined Devaney and her family on their biannual pilgrimage from their home in Arizona to the Music Meadows ranch in Westcliffe, Colorado. Spanning summer and winter – fast-paced rodeo competition and lonely ranch work amidst the dramatic Colorado landscape – the series sidles both joy and tragedy, as Parsons’ soft gaze renders Devaney, her wider family, their horses and the uniquely American landscapes their lives occupy. Flitting between the documentary and the personal, Lone Dove offers an at once intimate and expansive reading of a group of anomalous lives amidst the iconographic American West. In the process, she gently challenges the archetypes of what it means to be a young woman, a horsewoman, a sister and a daughter.
At the center of Bec Parsons’ practice is an enduring interest in connection, not simply how people appear, but how they reveal themselves within an image. The result is a body of work that resists spectacle in favour of feeling, creating photographs that remain quietly powerful long after first viewing.
Having founded LOVEWANT her clients include: Bottega Veneta, Celine, Chanel, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Miu Miu and Prada
