Damien Parer
| Damien Parer | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | 1 August 1912 Malvern, Victoria |
| Died |
17 September 1944 (aged 32) Peleliu, Palau |
| Occupation | Australian cameraman and award-winning war cinematographer |
| Spouse(s) | Elizabeth Marie Cotter |
| Children | Damien Parer |
Damien Peter Parer (1 August 1912 – 17 September 1944) was an Australian war photographer. He became famous for his war photography of the Second World War, and was killed by Japanese machine-gun fire at Peleliu, Palau. He was cinematographer for Australia's first Oscar-winning film, Kokoda Front Line!, an edition of the weekly newsreel, Cinesound Review, which was produced by Ken G. Hall.
Damien Parer was born at Malvern in Melbourne, the eighth child of John Arthur Parer, a Spanish-born hotel manager on King Island and his wife Teresa. In 1923, he and his brother Adrian were sent as boarders to St Stanislaus' College in Bathurst and St Kevin's College, Melbourne. He joined the school's camera club, and decided that he wanted to be a photographer, rather than a priest. However, finding a job as a photographer in depression-era Australia proved difficult, so he resumed his education at St Kevin's in East Melbourne. While at this school he won a prize in a photographic competition run by the Melbourne newspaper, The Argus, and used the money to buy a Graflex camera used by professional photographers.
Parer obtained an apprenticeship with Arthur Dickinson. He said later that he learned most about photography from Dickinson and Max Dupain. He finished his apprenticeship in 1933 and, sometime later, obtained work with the director Charles Chauvel on the film Heritage, where he met and became friends with another up-and-coming filmmaker of the time, John Heyer. At the conclusion of that film, and with the help of Chauvel, he obtained work in Sydney, and so moved there in 1935.
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