In conjunction with Black History Month, the National Gallery of Art has hosted the first exhibition of early works by one of the nation's finest social photographers, Gordon Parks (1912-2006), who overcame poverty and discrimination to excel at photography, music, writing, and film making.
The exhibition, Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940–1950, closes Monday with more than 150 pictures Mr. Parks made of glamour queens, coal miners, Langston Hughes, and black life. Documents from his own life are included.
Before Mr. Parks became the first black photographer at Life magazine, he worked for the U.S. government in Washington in the 1940s where he made life of black poverty visible to many through his pictures.
National Gallery of Art, Corcoran Collection
Mr. Parks was a self-taught professional out of Kansas who was influenced by Charles White, Roy Stryker, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison. After his mother died, he moved to St. Paul to live with his sister, but her abusive husband drove Mr. Parks to the streets where he lived homeless and sought warmth in streetcars where he slept.
He was one of the first to join the Civilian Conservation Corps and worked as a waiter on a railroad where a fellow waiter gave him a magazine that changed Mr. Parks's life. In the magazine he saw photographs which awakened him to another life and a way up and out. He began reading everything he could find about photography and took classes.
On Sunday, February 17 at 2 p.m. in the National Gallery's East Building Auditorium, Harry Allen, Nelson George, Adrian Loving, Miles Marshall Lewis, and Vikki Tobak will discuss Hip-Hop’s Great Day: Gordon Parks and a Legacy of Photographic Inspiration.
Films made by Gordon Parks will be screened at 12:30 p.m. February 22, February 27, and March 8, 2019, also in the East Building Auditorium.
A signature catalogue ($48) of more 300+ pages and 168 of his photographs, which was produced and published by the Gordon Parks Foundation and Steidl working with the National Gallery, is available. Included are an extensive chronology of Mr. Parks's life, copies of pages of his photographs which ran in the St. Paul Recorder in Minnesota, and papers of his application for a fellowship to the Julius Rosenwald Fund which made Mr. Parks the first photographer to receive an award.
Nearby in other rooms at the National Gallery are pictures by another black photographer, Dawoud Bey, who has his own show, The Birmingham Project, ending April 21, 2019:
Working in collaboration with the Gordon Parks Foundation in Pleasantville, N.Y., the National Gallery of Art organized both exhibitions. Philip Brookman was the Parks's curator.
After Washington, the exhibition travels to the Cleveland Museum of Art, March 23–June 9, 2019; Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, August 31–December 29, 2019; and Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, February 1–April 26, 2020.
What: Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940–1950
When: Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m.- 6 p.m. Open on Presidents Day.
Where: The ground floor of the West Building between Third and Ninth streets at Constitution Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. On the Mall.
Admission charge: No charge
Metro stations closest to the National Gallery of Art are the Smithsonian, Federal Triangle, Navy Memorial-Archives and L'Enfant Plaza.
For more information: 202-737-4215
patricialesli@gmail.com
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