GORDON PARKS (b. 1912, Fort Scott, Kansas, D. 2006, New York) began his career in Chicago as a society portraitist, eventually becoming the first African-American photographer for Vogue and Life Magazine. Parks was deeply committed to social justice, focusing on issues of race, poverty, civil rights, and urban communities, documenting pivotal moments in American culture until his death in 2006. Now referred to as The Segregation Story, this series was originally shot in 1956 on assignment for Life Magazine in Mobile, Alabama. While some of these photographs were initially published, the remaining negatives were thought to be lost, until 2012 when archivists from the Gordon Parks Foundation discovered the color negatives in a box marked “Segregation Series”. These images were then printed posthumously. Recent exhibitions include the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The High Museum of Atlanta; the New Orleans Museum of Art, The Studio Museum, Harlem, and upcoming retrospectives will be held at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC in 2017 and 2018 respectively.
