Bøker av Gordon Parks

Originally published in 1971, Gordon Parks' Born Black was the first book to unite his writing and his photography. It was also the first to provide a focused survey of Parks' documentation of a crucial time for the civil rights and Black Power movements. Today, more than 50 years later, this expanded edition of Born Black illuminates Parks' vision for the book and offers deeper insight into the series within it. The original publication featured nine articles commissioned by Life magazine from 1963 to 1970-some never-before published-supplemented with later commentary by Parks and presented as his personal account of these important historical moments. Born Black includes the original text and images, as well as additional photographs from each series, spreads from the 1971 book, early correspondence, reproductions of related Life articles, and new scholarly essays. The nine series selected by Parks for Born Black-a rare glimpse inside San Quentin State Prison; extensive documentation of the Black Muslim movement and the Black Panthers; his commentaries on the deaths of civil rights leaders Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.; intimate portrait studies of Stokely Carmichael, Muhammad Ali and Eldridge Cleaver; and a narrative of the daily life of the impoverished Fontenelle family in Harlem-have come to define his legendary career as a photographer and activist. This reimagined, comprehensive edition of Born Black highlights the lasting legacy of these projects and their importance to our understanding of critical years in American history.Co-published with The Gordon Parks Foundation

By 1944, Gordon Parks had established himself as a photographer who freely navigated the fields of press and commercial photography, with an unparalleled humanist perspective. That year, Roy Stryker-the former Farm Security Administration official who was now heading the public relations department for The Standard Oil Company (New Jersey)-commissioned Parks to travel to Pittsburgh Pennsylvania to document the Penola, Inc. Grease Plant.Employing his signature style, Parks spent two years chronicling the plant's industry-critical to Pittsburgh's history and character-by photographing its workers and the range of their activities. The resulting photographs, dramatically staged and lit and striking in their composition, showed the range of activities by black and white workers, divided by roles, race and class. The images were used as marketing material and made available to local and national newspapers, as well corporate magazines and newsletters. However, they served as much more than documentation of industry-enduring as an exploration of labor and its social and economic ramifications in World War II America by one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century.Featuring more than 100 photographs, many previously unpublished, this is the first book to focus exclusively on Parks' photographs for The Standard Oil Company, illuminating an important chapter in his career prior to his landmark career as a staff photographer for Life magazine.