Past Exhibition

Gordon Parks: The New Tide, 1940-1950

A young Black man stands in profile looking out a tall window to our right in this vertical black and white photograph. The image is cropped so his head, shoulder, and upper arm fill the left half of the composition. He has short hair and wears a shirt or jacket that diffuses the light to suggest that it could be flannel or another soft fabric. With a cigarette dangling loosely from his lips, he stares through the shattered upper pane of the window and he holds his right hand across his chest. The strong light source from the right accentuates his nose, cheeks, hair, and shoulder, and the space behind him is lost in shadow. A blurred, three-story building across the street has a dark façade with white stone lintels above the windows and a mansard roof with curved dormers.
Gordon Parks, Trapped in abandoned building by a rival gang on street, Red Jackson ponders his next move, 1948, gelatin silver print, Corcoran Collection (The Gordon Parks Collection), 2015.19.4605

Details

  • Dates

    -

  • Locations

    West Building, Ground Floor, Outer Tier Galleries
A young Black man stands in profile looking out a tall window to our right in this vertical black and white photograph. The image is cropped so his head, shoulder, and upper arm fill the left half of the composition. He has short hair and wears a shirt or jacket that diffuses the light to suggest that it could be flannel or another soft fabric. With a cigarette dangling loosely from his lips, he stares through the shattered upper pane of the window and he holds his right hand across his chest. The strong light source from the right accentuates his nose, cheeks, hair, and shoulder, and the space behind him is lost in shadow. A blurred, three-story building across the street has a dark façade with white stone lintels above the windows and a mansard roof with curved dormers.
Gordon Parks, Trapped in abandoned building by a rival gang on street, Red Jackson ponders his next move, 1948, gelatin silver print, Corcoran Collection (The Gordon Parks Collection), 2015.19.4605

During the 1940s American photographer Gordon Parks (1912–2006) grew from a self-taught photographer making portraits and documenting everyday life in Saint Paul and Chicago to a visionary professional shooting for Ebony, Vogue, Fortune, and Life. For the first time, the formative decade of Parks’s 60-year career is the focus of an exhibition, which brings together 150 photographs and ephemera—including magazines, books, letters, and family pictures. The exhibition will illustrate how Parks’s early experiences at the Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information, and Standard Oil (New Jersey) as well as his close relationships with Roy Stryker, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison, helped shape his groundbreaking style. A fully illustrated catalog, with extensive new research and previously unpublished images, will accompany the exhibition.

The exhibition is curated by Philip Brookman, consulting curator, department of photographs, National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Other Venues:

  • The Cleveland Museum of Art, 03/23/2019–06/09/2019
  • Amon Carter Museum of American Art, 08/31/2019–12/29/2019
  • Addison Gallery of American Art, 02/01/2020–04/26/2020

Organization: Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in collaboration with The Gordon Parks Foundation.

Sponsors: Bank of America is proud to be the national sponsor of Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940-1950
Generous support is also kindly provided by the Trellis Fund.
Additional support comes from The Exhibition Circle of the National Gallery of Art.

Attendance: 71,153

Catalog: Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940-1950. By Philip Brookman et al. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2018.

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