Gordon Parks, 'Untitled, Shady Grove, Alabama,' 1956.
Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation
Looking for an artist whose entire career stood as an unvarnished portrait of America with the nation celebrating and mourning its 250th anniversary? Look no further than Gordon Parks.
In a career that spanned more than 50 years, photographer, filmmaker, musician and author Gordon Parks (1912–2006) created a groundbreaking body of work that made him one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Beginning in the 1940s, he documented American life and culture with a focus on social justice, race relations, the Civil Rights Movement and the African American experience.
Born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, KS, Parks was drawn to photography as a young man. Despite his lack of professional training, he won a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1942; this led to a position with the photography section of the Farm Security Administration in Washington, D.C. and, later, the Office of War Information. By the mid-1940s, he was working as a freelance photographer for publications such as Vogue, Glamour and Ebony. Parks was hired in 1948 as a staff photographer for Life magazine, where for more than two decades he created some of his most notable work.
In 1969 he became the first African American to write and direct a major feature film, The Learning Tree, based on his semiautobiographical novel. His next directorial endeavor, Shaft (1971), helped define a genre then referred to as Blaxploitation.
“You’re damn right!”
Parks continued photographing, publishing and composing until his death in 2006.
The Gordon Parks Foundation celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2026 with a yearlong series of exhibitions, publications, fellowships, and events, all of which highlight how Parks’ legacy continues informing contemporary artistic practice.
The Gordon Parks Foundation supports and produces artistic and educational initiatives advancing the artist’s legacy and vision. The Foundation was co-founded in 2006 by Parks with his longtime friend and editor at Life magazine, Philip B. Kunhardt, Jr., to preserve his creative work and support the next generation of artists advancing social justice.
Through exhibitions, publications, and public programs, organized in collaboration with institutions internationally and at its exhibition space in Pleasantville, NY, the Foundation provides access to and supports understanding of the work and contributions of Parks for artists, scholars, students, and the public.
The Foundation's archive houses the artist’s photographs, negatives, contact sheets, publications, and a selection of ephemera related to his work in photography, film, music and writing. The archive also includes collections by related artists.
Through fellowships, prizes, and scholarships, the Foundation provides vital support to artists, writers, and students—current and future generations of creatives whose work continues Park’s mission of using the arts to further “the common search for a better life and a better world.”
Gordon Parks, 'At Segregated Drinking Fountain, Mobile, Alabama,' 1956.
Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation
At Jackson Fine Arts gallery in Atlanta, “Gordon Parks: The South in Color,” organized in partnership with The Gordon Parks Foundation and curated by acclaimed American photographer Dawoud Bey, celebrates two important milestones: the 70th anniversary of the landmark publication of Parks’ images of the segregated South in Life magazine and the 20th anniversary of the founding of The Gordon Parks Foundation. The exhibition will present more than 30 photographs from the artist’s “Segregation Story” series and debut a brand-new portfolio published by the Foundation.
“Segregation Story” was photographed in and around Mobile, AL in the Summer of 1956 for Life magazine. The images reveal the mundane cruelty of life in a segregated Southern city among other subjects. The dignity of African Americans living under such hostile conditions. The shocking pervasiveness of racial separation.
The exhibition opens April 2nd with a public reception from 6-8 PM and a remarkably special guest: Cora Taylor. Taylor was photographed by Parks in the image, At Segregated Drinking Fountain, Mobile, Alabama. The picture stands as one of his most recognized photographs and one of the most powerful images in American history.
The exhibition additionally premiers a limited-edition portfolio entitled “The South in Color,” published by the Foundation. The 10 photographs in this new portfolio highlight Parks’ attention to children, whose presence anchors many of the series’ most powerful images. A printing of Dawoud Bey’s essay “The South in Color” is included in the portfolio.
The exhibition is free to visit through June 13, 2026.
Gordon Parks, 'Anacostia, D.C. Frederick Douglass Housing Project. A family says grace before the evening meal. June 1942.'
Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation
The Center for Art and Advocacy in Brooklyn presents “A Language We Share: Beverly Price and Gordon Parks,” an exhibition featuring an intergenerational dialogue between Beverly Price (2023 Center Fellow) and Parks. Rather than positioning the artists as past and present, the exhibition understands their images as occupying a shared continuum, speaking both forward and backward through enduring ethical commitments to dignity, truth, and social responsibility.
Price began working with the camera in 2016, 10 years after returning home from incarceration. She started documenting life in her hometown of Washington, D.C., focusing on the Southeast Anacostia neighborhood and the Barry Farms community. Her work centers the experience of children in those communities, showing how their everyday lives can be and so often are defined by spontaneity and possibility.
Price’s photographs echo those made by Parks in the same neighborhoods in 1942 when he produced images that would become foundational documents of Black life in Washington, D.C.
By showing kids in moments of reverie, Price aims to preserve and protect forms of childhood that are routinely eroded in hyper-violent and over-policed environments. Through the act of image-making, she asserts care as a form of protection across time—rooted in lived experience, accountability, and personal reckoning.
Parks’ photographs of Washington in the 40s—at once timeless and unmistakably of their era—model the camera as both witness and moral instrument. His work in the photography section of the Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information chronicled the nation’s social conditions.
Though taken across decades, these images insist that the struggle for civil rights unfolds at the level of everyday human relationships and that joy and play persist not as detours from justice, but as embodied expressions of it.
The exhibition coincides with two significant anniversaries: the 20th anniversary of Parks’ death and the 20-year anniversary of Beverly Price’s return from incarceration. Together, these milestones underscore the exhibition’s central premise: that images do not end in the moment they are made, but rather persist, accumulate, and speak across generations.
The exhibition is free to visit through June 19, 2026.
Gordon Parks, n.d.
Courtesy The Gordon Parks Foundation
“The Sound of Gordon Parks” at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles explores the lesser-known sonic dimension of Parks artistic legacy. Parks was a dedicated composer whose musical output has remained largely underexplored.
Developed in partnership with The Gordon Parks Foundation and Mario Sprouse—Parks’s longtime musical assistant and archivist of more than 20 years—the exhibition invites visitors into the rich soundscape of the artist’s creative universe through music, video, and rarely seen archival materials.
The exhibition is free to visit and on view from April 7 through September 13, 2026.
While not focusing solely on Parks, anyone interested in his work will also be interested in “Black Photojournalism” at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth. The exhibition brings together more than 250 photographs by more than 60 photographers working across the United States between 1945 and the mid-1980s.
From the rise of Black-owned media following World War II to the Civil Rights Movement and beyond, these images showcase the vital contributions of Black photojournalists in shaping how people saw themselves and their communities. Their photographs not only documented moments of social change, but also captured the vibrancy of daily life, offering a fuller and more nuanced portrayal of Black experiences in America.
Together, these pictures underscore how photojournalism served as both a record of history and a tool for empowerment. Drawn from archives and collections across the country, the original photography prints in “Black Photojournalism” reveal the tireless efforts of Black publishers, photographers, and news professionals who built groundbreaking editorial methods and networks during a time of urgent social change. Newspapers and magazines such as the Afro American News, Atlanta Daily World, Chicago Defender, Ebony, and Pittsburgh Courier offered powerful new ways for Black readers to see themselves and their communities, transforming the media landscape in ways that continue to resonate today.
“Black Photojournalism” will be on view at the Carter, free to visit, through July 5, 2026.
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