Picturing Prince: An Intimate Portrait

Steve Parke

Prince was no ordinary boss, no ordinary anything.

Introduced to Prince by band member Levi Seacer Jr. and friend, in 1988, Steve Parke was initially hired as a set designer for the Glam Slam video shoot and rose to Paisley Park’s in-house art director, a position he held until he quit in 2001.

Throughout the 1990s, Parke illustrated the artwork for many of Prince’s albums, the first Graffiti Bridge was intended as a portfolio piece but Prince liked it and had Parke add the other cast members to it and so formed the album’s cover. Parke then did the artwork for Chaos And Disorder, Emancipation and Crystal Ball. And designed the merchandise and the sets for Prince’s tours, programmes and videos.

In 1997, Parke became Prince’s official photographer and shot the cover photos for The Truth, Newpower Soul and Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic. He became a trusted friend and during his tenure, shot extensive pictures of Prince in the comfort of Paisley Park and its surroundings.

Picturing Prince: An Intimate Portrait comprises of 224 pages of both previously published and unseen photos from Parke’s personal archive and features the backstory behind each image. Many are shot in environs within or around Paisley Park Studios in casual settings, such as at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. Picturing Prince: An Intimate Portrait was published in 2017 at the first anniversary of Prince’s death. Its foreword is written by Sheila E, Parke’s friend and his gateway to Levi Seacer and thirteen years working for Prince. Parke has since published two follow up books issuing more images from his extensive archive of Prince, entitled Prince: Icon (2024) and Prince: Black, White, Color (2026).

Synopsis

Picturing Prince sees the late icon’s former art director, Steve Parke, revealing stunning intimate photographs of the singer from his time working at Paisley Park. At least half of the images in the book are exclusively published here for the first time; most other images in the book are rare to the public eye.

Alongside these remarkable images are fifty engaging, poignant and often funny written vignettes by Parke, which reveal the very human man behind the reclusive superstar: from shooting hoops to renting out movie theatres at 4am; from midnight requests for camels to meaningful conversations that shed light on Prince as a man and artist.

Data

Author

Steve Parke

Publisher

Octopus Publishing Group

Released

6 April 2017

Format

Hardback

ISBN

978-1844039593