Photos Courtesy of Denison Museum
Julia Barker, Special to The Denisonian —-
Gordon Parks (1912-2006) was an artist who dedicated his life to documenting social justice and issues of inequality within the American experience through photography, film and literature. From mid-January through March 29th the exhibition “Gordon Parks & Contemporaries: Through the Lens” will be shown in the Denison Museum. This exhibition focuses on three photographers who have made their mark on photojournalism through the documentation of human existence. The work on exhibit highlights the work of not only Gordon Parks but his contemporaries Adger Cowans and Eli Reed.
Parks is the first Black photographer to work for LIFE magazine documenting racial segregation and inequality in America. He’s been committed to showing social justice issues by focusing on the American experience through photography. Parks’ photographic work spans from the early 1940s to the 2000s, focusing on race relations, poverty, civil rights and urban life. Parks had a unique talent for capturing vivid emotion within the human experience through his work in photography, and his photos express the raw emotion that Americans felt in the face of segregation and countless other human rights issues.
“Gordon Parks is a seminal Black photographer… and most people know him through his photojournalistic works.” said Megan Hancock, Senior Curator of Education and Exhibitions at the Denison Museum. “He worked for both the US government, through the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and war office… there are thousands of images, and… stories about what life in America was like at that time…”
Parks also wrote poetry, novels and plays, composed music, and wrote and directed films. He’s recognized as the first Black American to have written, directed, and scored a major Hollywood motion picture.
“Although most of us know his photography work, I think most people don’t realize he also wrote. He was writing a lot of the stories in LIFE, besides taking the photographs…We have the LIFE magazines on view, so you can look at and flip through the magazines…” said Hancock.
The two artists featured alongside Gordon Parks are Eli Reed and Adger Cowans and they’ve both won the Gordon Parks Award. This is an award presented by The Gordon Parks Foundation to artists who reflect Parks’ ideas and goals by using creative methods to inspire further generations.
“Out of a lot of these award winners, the two that were selected… helped expand the narrative of what we were trying to capture,” said Hancock. “Adger Cowans… is most well known for his work out on Hollywood sets…but he was also at a lot of different events… He was at the Malcolm X speech… He’s at the Newport Jazz Festival…Eli Reed is most well known for his photojournalistic work in Latin America, as well as the Middle East. He’s done stuff for National Geographic… but he has also worked out in Hollywood on music sets, and film sets…He was there during the protest and bombing of Beirut, he was there documenting the story of the Lost Boys when it was happening in the 90s.”
Parks, Reed and Cowans use the power of photojournalism as a way to expand the narrative surrounding social justice issues, using their medium as a way to reveal human emotion through a photo. This exhibition is linked to the upcoming Vail concert featuring six-time Grammy® winner and Emmy® nominated trumpeter Terence Blanchard, the E-Collective, fellow Grammy® winners Turtle Island Quartet, and visual artist Andrew F. Scott, who will celebrate Gordon Parks’ work in a stunning multimedia concert of music and art.