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When Gordon Parks picked up a digital camera in 1937, aged 25, Black Americans round him have been processing the repercussions of the Civil War. In 1865, 4 million enslaved individuals have been emancipated; whereas they tried to construct their lives over the following a long time, they have been subjected to humiliating racial segregation legal guidelines, mob violence and lynching, and denied a vote.
Parks, born into poverty and segregation, was a witness to all of it. After shopping for a Voigtländer Brillant digital camera from a Seattle pawn store for lower than $12, he taught himself to take images. In 1948, Parks was employed by Life journal, the primary Black workers member, writing articles to accompany his picture essays, which emphasised the dignity and resilience of his topics.
Many of Parks’ very important works, together with his Segregation within the South sequence and portrait of Dr Martin Luther King Jr as he delivered his landmark ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, have now been united in London in a curation at Alison Jacques gallery, overseen by social justice activist Bryan Stevenson.
Gordon Parks, Outside Looking In, Mobile, Alabama, 1956
(Image credit score: Courtesy The Gordon Parks Foundation, New York and Alison Jacques © The Gordon Parks Foundation)
‘Through the lens of Gordon Parks, Black people could be beautiful, complex, joyous, grief-stricken, regal, triumphant, burdened and overwhelmed. He made the Black community fully human’
Bryan Stevenson, social justice activist and curator of the exhibition
Stevenson, who acquired the Martin Luther King Jr Nonviolent Peace Prize in 2018, and was named by Time as one of many world’s 100 most influential individuals in 2015, brings a pointy eye to his curation, which spans a 25-year interval, from 1942 to 1967. The exhibition, titled ‘We Shall Not be Moved’, is known as after the protest anthem that stemmed from the African American non secular track ‘I Shall Not Be Moved’, indicating steely resolve.
For Stevenson, Parks’ function as a humanitarian turns into the central focus. ‘In some ways, Gordon Parks was a role model,’ he says. ‘He’s helped me see the importance of narrative in advancing justice and the power of art to create spaces where you can impact both the mind and the heart. I love that he elevated the lived experience of so many people like me and he allowed us to see our struggles in a larger context. It was a joy to curate an exhibit that animates the power, dignity, strength and resolve of people who are oppressed but determined to be free.’
Gordon Parks, Mr and Mrs Albert Thornton, Mobile, Alabama, 1956
(Image credit score: Courtesy The Gordon Parks Foundation, New York and Alison Jacques © The Gordon Parks Foundation)
The scale of the works on present right here renders all of them the extra highly effective. Outside Looking In, taken of Black youngsters trying via metal mesh at white youngsters in a playground in Alabama in 1956, is emotive and placing. Department Store and Mr and Mrs Albert Thornton really feel virtually too intimate to view.
Gordon Parks, Department Store, Mobile, Alabama, 1956
(Image credit score: Courtesy The Gordon Parks Foundation, New York and Alison Jacques © The Gordon Parks Foundation)
‘There is an inherent tension in wanting to educate people about the harm, degradation and brutality of bigotry and discrimination without completely presenting or defining people in terms of their victimisation,’ says Stevenson, declaring that Parks was considerate in treading the road between exploitation and training. ‘Gordon Parks seemed to be aware of this challenge and his images were unusually effective because they depicted the brutality and anguish of exclusion and racism while still emphasising the dignity and beauty of the people excluded. Parks documented the harm of segregation but also the hope of those who were marginalised. You respect and admire the subjects in many of his photos because he’s made you aware of the burdens they bear, but also their determination to persevere.’
Gordon Parks, At Segregated Drinking Fountain, Mobile, Alabama, 1956
(Image credit score: Courtesy The Gordon Parks Foundation, New York and Alison Jacques © The Gordon Parks Foundation)
Seen collectively, Parks’ images are an emotional tribute to this perseverance within the face of a seemingly informal on a regular basis injustice. It runs via all the things, from a toddler’s ice-cream cone to a pupil peering via a microscope. Adds Stevenson: ‘Through the lens of Gordon Parks, Black people could be beautiful, complex, joyous, grief-stricken, regal, triumphant, burdened and overwhelmed. He made the Black community fully human, which was atypical of the images most frequently presented, and especially uncommon in mainstream publications with white readers.’
For Parks, images was the medium via which he might obtain the best impression. In 1970, when chatting with Eldridge Cleaver, an early chief of the Black Power organisation, The Black Panther Party, he commented: ‘You have a 45mm automatic pistol on your lap, and I have a 35mm camera on my lap, and my weapon is just as powerful as yours.’
‘We Shall Not Be Moved’ at Alison Jacques London from 5 March – 11 April 2026, alisonjacques.com
Gordon Parks, Untitled, Chicago, Illinois, 1957
(Image credit score: Courtesy The Gordon Parks Foundation, New York and Alison Jacques © The Gordon Parks Foundation)
Gordon Parks, Untitled, Shady Grove, Alabama, 1956
(Image credit score: Courtesy The Gordon Parks Foundation, New York and Alison Jacques © The Gordon Parks Foundation)
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