Gordon Parks

Gordon Parks was one of the seminal figures of twentieth century photography, who left behind a body of work that documents many of the most important aspects of American culture from the early 1940s up until his death in 2006, with a focus on race relations, poverty, civil rights, and urban life. Born into poverty and segregation in Kansas in 1912, Parks taught himself photography after buying a camera at a pawnshop. He found employment with the Farm Security Administration (F.S.A.), which was then chronicling the nation’s social conditions, before his employment at Life magazine (1948-1972).

Gordon Parks was the first African American photographer employed by Life magazine, and the Segregation Story was a pivotal point in his career, introducing a national audience to the lived experience of segregation in Mobile, Alabama. Parks’ artworks stand out in the history of civil rights photography, most notably because they are color images of intimate daily life that illustrate the accomplishments and injustices experienced by the Thornton family. Immobility, both geographic and economic, is an underlying theme in many of the images. Parks employs a haunting subtlety to his compositions, interlacing elegance, playfulness, community, and joy with strife, oppression, and inequality. An otherwise bucolic street scene is harrowed by the presence of the hand-painted “Colored Only” sign hanging across entrances and drinking fountains.

He has received countless awards, including the National Medal of Art and over fifty honorary doctorates. His work has been exhibited at The Studio Museum in Harlem, the New York Public Library, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the High Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Courtesy of Rhona Hoffman Gallery