Rare Photos Reveal Princes Hidden World and Legacy

Wrapped in a black wool cardigan against the autumn chill, the mercurial musician Prince clutches a rope swing in an outdoor playground, a slight frown crossing his brow as he stares with soulful eyes at the photographer snapping the shots that October afternoon in 1999.

Just behind him is a pastel blue baby swing, built three years earlier for the son Prince had always wanted, but who tragically died from a rare genetic disease when he was six days old.

At the time, photographer Steve Parke was immersed in the task at hand: personal photographer to Prince, he was at the beck and call of the singer, his highly stylized images helping maintain the persona of the larger-than-life cultural icon.

But now, looking back on that afternoon, he remembers how the mood of the shoot changed as they walked around the grounds of Paisley Park, the sound studio in Chanhassen, , which eventually became Prince's sanctuary and the site of his death aged 57.

Parke recalled: 'He was in this really sparkly stuff, and then he changed into a sweater and we shot back near the pond and then we went out front and I think he saw something [and said], "Okay, this would be interesting to do something here."'

It was October 22, almost exactly three years to the day since Prince's son had died.

'The mood changed,' Parke said of that day in the park. 'In the moment, I don't think I recognized anything necessarily… but when I looked at [the photos] later, I definitely noticed a shift in his mood and the energy kind of came down.'

That striking photo of Prince is one of hundreds of images in Parke's new book, Prince: Black, White, Color, published on Tuesday, a week before the tenth anniversary of the singer's death on April 21, 2016, when he suffered an accidental fentanyl overdose.

Parke was Prince's personal photographer and art director from 1996 to 2001, a period of deep personal trauma and upheaval for the musician, who always struggled to reconcile his public persona with his personal demons.

While Parke stresses that he never spoke to Prince about his personal traumas, he hopes the luminous photographs in his new book - many of them published for the first time and seen here exclusively - will help people see the man behind the mask.

'When people start seeing [the photos], the one thing I got back from them is, "Oh, I didn't know he went outside. I didn't know he didn't wear shoes sometimes,"' he said. 'Seeing that is kind of like, "This guy was amazing, but still just a guy."'

Many of the images capture Prince as fans remember him: highly polished and posed, seductive and chameleon-like in his genderbending makeup, jewelry and clothing.

He pouts at the camera, caresses his dancers, suggestively rolls down his glittery trousers to reveal a hip bone or a toned stomach daubed with gold finger paint.

But in others, we see a different side: thoughtful, pensive, reflective. Parke highlights a series he took of Prince at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. Against the soft autumn colors, we see Prince with eyes closed and wind-tousled hair, backlit by the late afternoon sun.

'We just were there, and he had some very specific spots he wanted to shoot in, but then we just walked around and found places and it was really nice, very relaxed,' he said.

Parke believes he was able to capture such shots because of their close relationship, in which they discussed everything from spirituality to the news of the day, with 'a free flow of ideas.'

'Because we had a day-to-day working relationship, and also I would say a friendship as well, when we did things, there wasn't all the same kind of pressure,' he told The Daily Mail.

Parke grew up listening to Prince and came into his orbit by chance in the mid-1980s when he was doing odd jobs shooting photos of musicians in Washington. He exchanged contacts with a bass player, who eventually joined Prince's band and put the pair in contact.

Their creative relationship began in 1988 when he was invited to Paisley Park to do some set design. Prince was happy with the results and started giving the young artist more work, including T-shirt designs, and they built a good rapport.

Despite the flamboyant stage persona, Prince was known as a deeply introspective person, who could be painfully shy and nursed personal trauma from a childhood in which he suffered at the hands of an abusive stepfather, a neglectful mother and emotionally distant father.

Building trust with individuals was therefore an issue, and Parke believed this helped him land the job of Prince's personal photographer in 1996, despite his lack of experience.

'I do think the comfort level was there… you don't have to deal with a whole new set of people all the time,' he said.

Working with the then-embryonic technology of digital cameras, the pair experimented with the form, working together on lighting, composition and post-production.

Parke describes working with Prince as an intense experience, with the singer demanding total commitment in time and focus. They would regularly work into the small hours of the morning and sometimes all night long to ensure the photos fit the exacting vision of the artist.

So, one evening in 1996 stood out: Prince's wife Mayte - whom he had married on Valentine's Day that year - was pregnant with their first child. Excited about the birth, Prince had clouds painted on the walls at Paisley Park and a playground constructed on the grounds.

Parke and Prince were working on some photos when at 9pm, Prince gave an exaggerated yawn and said he was going to bed.

'I'm like, that's so odd, why did that happen?' Parke said. 'But I started piecing together other things, and I do think he was trying to prepare for having a kid.'

That child, Amiir Nelson, was born on October 16, 1996. But he had the rare genetic disorder, Pfeiffer syndrome type 2, which causes a severe deformity of the skull, and could not breathe on his own.

Life expectancy for children like Amiir ranges from a few hours to a few months. Mayte and Prince had to make the heartbreaking decision to take him off the respirator, and he died on October 23.

Prince struggled to process the grief. He went back to work immediately and a week after their son's death, the couple did an interview with Oprah Winfrey at Paisley Park. Mayte wrote in her autobiography that Prince instructed her not to mention that Amiir had died.

But Parke's photos in the playground suggest it was always on his mind: they were taken on October 22, 1999, the eve of the third anniversary on his son's death.

Many other photos in Parke's new book, published by ACC Art Books, have added poignancy with hindsight: a collection of black and white images taken in mid-1999 at a villa in Marbella, Spain, show Prince and Mayte curled up in white pajamas in bed with their dogs - an image of domestic harmony.

But the following year, they divorced, as they struggled to get over Amiir's death.

'Like many people who go through those kinds of tragedies, it is such a difficult situation that making choices that are good - choices that would be good in the long run for your relationship - is hard,' Parke speculated.

'I could see the idea of, "Let's just let this go, because it's happened now, and we let it go," [but] I don't think that generally resolves well for people.'

Today Parke is filled with the deepest respect and awe for his former boss. Their working relationship ended in 2001, after Parke had a son and realized parenthood was not compatible with the singer's unrelenting demands.

The last time he saw Prince was as a regular member of the audience in Baltimore in May 2015, when Prince sang at a concert to honor Freddie Gray, the young man whose death in police custody on April 19 that year sparked riots in the street of the Maryland city.

Now, as the anniversary of Prince's death approaches, Parke hopes that his photos will play some role in helping a new generation connect with Prince's astonishing musical legacy.

'Getting to see pictures is great and knowing more about them is fantastic, but I do think that his legacy is the music,' Parke said. 'I'm someone who was lucky enough to be pulled into that legacy, so if what I did helps remind people who he is and gets them to his music, then that's great, that's the part I would like to see.'