"Photography, even though some people refer to it as a mechanical process, forces you to reach out to the world in front of you. With painting I found that I was going more and more inward, so that things were coming from my head. I really like looking through the camera at what was in front of the camera, then it comes back through the camera and the choices make it my photograph. So often during the process things happen in the photograph that I couldn’t have anticipated." - Olivia Parker

When Parker started photographing, she worked exclusively in black-and-white, using large format cameras: 8 x 10′′up to 12 x 20′′. The split-toned contact prints she made possessed a rich tonal quality that has brought her continued renown in the photography community.

 

Parker eventually switched to digital technologies, mastering Lightroom as she did the darkroom, but she continues to explore the same concerns and aesthetics as she did in the very beginning of her career.