Playboy mansion parties, vomiting celebs, naked shoots: Gold Coast celebrity photographer spills beans on wild career
This Gold Coast photographer has travelled the world to shoot some of the world’s biggest celebrities including Madonna, DiCaprio and a naked Minogue. These are his wildest secrets.
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Hand grenades, assault rifles and intimidating-looking men in camo surround Adam Parsell as he’s driven through some of the meanest streets of Brazil. “The Sheriff” of Sao Paulo is out on patrol and Parsell is riding shotgun, armed with an iPhone to video the elite commandos of Sao Paulo’s Special Reaction Group as they hunt down terrorists and crime gang members hiding out in the favelas, or ghettos, of Brazil’s biggest city.
It’s another crazy day in the crazy life of the Gold Coast-based photographer, videographer, artist and fashion designer.
One week, Parsell – who has photographed and videoed some of the world’s biggest celebrities, and worked with some of the world’s biggest brands – can be doing a fashion shoot; the next, he can be on a ride-along with “The Sheriff”, Sao Paulo Special Reaction Group leader Fabio Bopp, and his men.
Parsell has done countless shoots for Playboy and spent time hanging out with Hugh Hefner and his bunnies at the Playboy mansion, been yelled at by Madonna for taking pictures of underwear models on her Mulholland Drive driveway, and captured some of the first celebrity snaps of a young Leonardo DiCaprio before he made it huge in Hollywood.
The self-styled “gypsy photographer” has travelled the globe for his work/passion, living at times out of his artistically painted station wagon on Sydney’s northern beaches while waiting for his next assignment, or working on the latest designs for his “Adam Shirts” brand.
“It’s certainly been one hell of a wild ride,” Parsell, 62, says over coffee at his favourite cafe at Palm Beach on the southern Gold Coast, where he recently relocated to from his native Sydney.
He’s dressed in his trademark funky style, including a pink denim jacket, a white T-shirt printed with one of his colourful images of retro Gold Coast Highway motel The Cheshire Cat, a yellow trucker cap and thick, white-rimmed sunglasses.
In his hand is the latest iPhone, which Parsell reluctantly uses for much of his work these days.
While the picture quality, tech and convenience are first rate, it grates somewhat on the purist in him – a photographic artist who honed his talent on film and in the darkroom.
Parsell’s mother worked in the fashion industry and inspired him to follow his creative dreams.
He picked up a camera in his early teens and began taking portraits of people around Sydney. Influenced by celebrated portrait and fashion photographers such as Richard Avedon, Norman Parkinson, Helmut Newton and Gilles Bensimon, Parsell left school at 16 and went to work in a black-and-white photographic studio darkroom for a modelling agency, “earning 80 bucks a week” while learning the trade.
He also had a stint as an apprentice hairdresser and became involved in the fitness industry, running gyms and coaching world champion surfers, including Tom Carroll, Martin Potter and Wendy Botha, in between honing his photography skills.
One of his early big breaks came in 1993 when he was chosen to shoot Dannii Minogue for the cover of arts and pop culture magazine black+white. Impressed with the results, Minogue later asked Parsell to photograph her for a 1995 cover of Australian Playboy.
“I felt he’d captured me beautifully in a way that I felt no other photographer had,” Minogue recalls in her 2010 memoir, My Story.
Parsell took Minogue into the Mojave Desert in California, where he photographed her in nothing but a “beat-up cowboy hat” and boots they’d bought at a vintage store on the drive out.
“In one of the shots that Adam set up, I was wearing just the hat and boots while kicking along through the dust with the sun slowly setting behind me,” Minogue writes in her autobiography. “It felt absolutely beautiful being in the middle of nowhere with the warm sunset glowing on my skin. I thought the pictures Adam took were tasteful and gorgeous. My mum and dad were relieved that the shots were not what they were expecting, and thought that their youngest daughter, despite being naked, looked rather lovely.”
Minogue also credits the Playboy shoot with helping her heal after her split from actor Julian McMahon, son of former Australian prime minister Sir William McMahon and socialite Lady Sonia. “
Parsell also remembers taking the late Chrissy Amphlett – the famously pouty lead singer of Aussie rockers Divinyls – into the same desert for a weird and wonderful photo shoot.
“Chrissy was really hungover and ended up puking out the car window on the way out,” he recalls. “We got to this spot in the middle of the desert where there were all these stuffed animals which some of the locals were bizarrely shooting at. “I’d brought a teddy bear for the shoot and Chrissy proceeded to pull out her boob and start breastfeeding the bear.
“I said, ‘I can’t shoot that.’ She said, ‘Oh, come on, darling.’ I said, ‘For you I will, but we won’t be submitting any of those shots’.”
Parsell did, however, capture some ethereal – and highly usable – shots of a pouting Amphlett in a frilly, open-neck lace shirt, wearing a black gravedigger’s hat and clutching the teddy.
As a photographer for both Australian and German Playboy, Parsell inevitably wound up at a party at the Playboy Mansion, hosted by Hefner.
“I was one of the youngest guys shooting for Playboy, and the first night at the mansion, I was so terrified and so drunk that I fell into a bush at the front door and never got up,” he says with a chuckle.
“Playboy was a really big deal for me and Hefner was very particular, especially for the centrefolds.
“His theory was that he wanted the eyebrows pin-sharp and the centrefold model’s lower private regions to match. He wanted huge negatives or trannies (transparencies) to look at for the drop-down centrefolds. He wanted to look at about 80 options, and it was a nightmare.
“I dealt mainly with Hefner’s daughter. He never really got out of his smoking jacket to leave the mansion very much.”
Parsell estimates he shot about a dozen Playboy centrefolds, including Minogue, four-time world surfing champion Botha and a former “Bond girl” who posed nude for German Playboy. “I was one of the only photographers back in the day who was shooting everything from beautiful Italian children’s fashion through to full nudes,” he says.
Another of Parsell’s more memorable photo shoots took place in the Hollywood Hills, where he was photographing a group of underwear-clad models for Dolly magazine.
“We were up on Mulholland Drive with
these four up-and-coming supermodels, and they’re all in white Calvin Klein undies and singlets,” he says.
“Out of the blue, my hair and make-up artist goes, ‘Oh my God, I think that’s Madonna.’ We were in her driveway and Madonna shouts out, ‘F--k off my property!’ All the girls were like, ‘Hi, Madonna’. That was all-time.”
Parsell also shot an event at The
Hollywood Athletic Club, the now 100-year-old iconic Sunset Boulevard building where the world’s biggest stars have worked out or
partied, including DiCaprio, Gene Simmons
and his KISS bandmates, Cuba Gooding Jr and Alec Baldwin.
“DiCaprio had just arrived in Hollywood and I got some of the first pictures of him,” he says.
“I only had a Polaroid camera and was running around taking polaroids of everyone and putting them in my pocket. Everyone had had a few drinks and (Schitt’s Creek and Home Alone star) Catherine O’Hara was running around the pool table with the guys from KISS.
“It was a crazy night for a young photographer from Australia.”
Some of Parsell’s other celebrity subjects over the years include Elton John, David Bowie, Cameron Diaz and all the world’s biggest surfing stars.
He has also shot more than 40 global calendars, including those for famed Aussie male revue Manpower, which starred a young Jamie Durie – before he became a celebrity gardener – as well as Gold Coast entertainment king Billy Cross.
Parsell recently shot Durie for a campaign for electric car maker BYD, while his portrait subjects in the last few years have included world champion surfer Mark Occhilupo, Mortgage Choice founder Pete Higgins and Byron Bay surfer and actor Rasmus King, who starred alongside Luke Hemsworth in the 2022 film Bosch & Rockit and also featured in a yet-to-be released autobiography on Silverchair frontman Daniel Johns.
Parsell has also worked for Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Men’s Health, Inside Sport and Body + Soul, and surfing magazines such as Surfer, Surfing and Tracks, and shot campaigns for Reebok, Pepsi Max, Schwarzkopf, Ray-Ban, Speedo, Seafolly, Billabong and Quiksilver.
In recent years, Parsell has spent time working in Brazil, photographing everyone from swimwear and lingerie models through to the South American nation’s world champion surfers, dubbed the “Brazilian Storm”.
They include three-time world champion Gabriel Medina, through whom Parsell met and became friends with “The Sheriff”, Fabio Bopp.
Usually while in Brazil, Parsell heads out on a mission with Bopp and his heavily armed men through the streets of Sao Paulo.
In videos he shows me, The Human League’s Don’t You Want Me is pumping incongruously from the car speakers as the Special Reaction Group operatives – all dark shades and poised trigger fingers – roam the favelas, hunting some of Brazil’s baddest bad guys.
“It’s an incredible honour going out on the road with Fabio, but also super heavy,” Parsell says.
“There’s this bizarre contrast where they’re playing their music – they love Aussie bands like Midnight Oil – but they’re armed to the teeth with AK-47s and hand grenades.”
From Brazil, Bopp says he’s been with the Special Reaction Group for 23 years, and as chief for 13. “In the 1990s, there were many cases of robbery that ended in hostage situations, so it became necessary to create a group that was prepared for specific situations,” he says.
“The most prepared police officers were called to participate and I was the first invited to join. I command 40 officers who are divided into a tactical team, snipers and a bomb squad.
“It’s amazing having a photographer of Adam’s calibre along with us to show a little bit of our work through his lens.
“His pictures are incredible.”
Brazilian identities, including football star Luis Fabiano and musician Sergio Mendes, have been among Parsell’s portrait subjects, while the country’s models and surf stars have become poster girls and boys for Adam Shirts, the clothing range he sells through Instagram.
The striking shirts feature vibrant one-off designs incorporating Parsell’s photos and artwork. Parsell has also branched out into custom jeans and jackets and he’s preparing to launch a children’s range.
“Gabe (Medina) is sponsored by Rip Curl but he chose to wear one of my shirts to this year’s World Surf League awards in Hawaii,” Parsell says.
“They’re custom-designed one-offs and retail for about $300 each, but I have clients who will order three at a time because the shirts are so beautiful and unique. It’s that cool and chic vibe that I want to bring to the fashion scene here in Queensland.”
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