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Prince's former art director Steve Parke is publishing a book with Cassell Illustrated, part of the Octopus Publishing Group, called Picturing Prince: An Intimate Portrait.
The book, publishing in hardack in April 2017, will include 100 "intimate" photographs of the singer from his time working at Paisley Park and 50 written vignettes by Parke revealing Prince's human side "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".
Commissioning editor Hannah Knowles acquired world rights all languages from Carrie Kania at Conville and Walsh.
Parke started working for Prince in 1988, after a mutual friend showed Prince some of his photorealistic paintings. He designed everything from album covers and merchandise to sets for Prince’s tours and videos and went on to become Paisley Park’s official art director. He began photographing Prince at the request of the star himself, and continued to do so for the next several years. The images in the book are the result of that collaboration.
Parke said: "The Prince I knew was wickedly funny, the biggest music geek I've ever met and (sometimes) cheated at ping pong. I wanted people to know that Prince. Hopefully this book allows them to. I also took lots of pictures of him; I wanted to share those, too."
Knowles said: "This is such a special book: Steve's wealth of unseen and rare photos of Prince provides a visually stunning celebration of the musical genius, and Parke accompanies his images with anecdotes that show what it was like to work at Paisley Park with the wonderfully mischievous, fiendishly intelligent and incomparably talented Purple One."