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Gordon Parks: Camera Portraits from the Corcoran Collection

Now on View

July 14, 2024 – January 12, 2025
West Building, Ground Floor — Gallery G22

See powerful portraits by one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century.

Gordon Parks: Camera Portraits looks at a celebrated American photographer and how he forged a new mode of portraiture after World War II. Parks blended a documentary photographer’s desire to place his subjects where they lived and worked with a studio photographer’s attention to dress, character, and expression. In doing so, he believed he could create portraits of individuals that addressed their cultural significance. He applied this approach to such American icons as boxer Muhammad Ali and conductor Leonard Bernstein, as well as to a Harlem gang leader and to a Detroit couple, revealing the humanity and cultural dignity of each person.

This exhibition, drawn primarily from the Corcoran Collection, presents some 25 portraits Parks made between 1941 and 1970. Explore Parks's innovations in portraiture through some of his best-known photographs. Learn how his portraits speak to larger stories of the civil rights movement, the African American experience, and American culture.

Selected Works

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: Camera Portraits from the Corcoran Collection

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
Gordon Parks: Camera Portraits from the Corcoran Collection

Gordon Parks, Husband and Wife, Sunday Morning, Detroit, Michigan (Bert Collins and Pauline Terry), 1950, printed later, gelatin silver print, Corcoran Collection (The Gordon Parks Collection), 2016.117.150
Gordon Parks: Camera Portraits from the Corcoran Collection

Gordon Parks, Pastor Ledbetter, Chicago, 1953, printed later, gelatin silver print, Corcoran Collection (The Gordon Parks Collection), 2016.117.180
Gordon Parks: Camera Portraits from the Corcoran Collection

Gordon Parks, Duke Ellington Listening to Playback, Los Angeles, 1960, printed later, gelatin silver print, Corcoran Collection (The Gordon Parks Collection), 2016.117.214
Gordon Parks: Camera Portraits from the Corcoran Collection

Gordon Parks, Malcolm X Addressing Black Muslim Rally in Chicago, 1963, printed later, gelatin silver print, Corcoran Collection (The Gordon Parks Collection), 2016.117.235
Gordon Parks: Camera Portraits from the Corcoran Collection

Gordon Parks, Muhammad Ali, 1966, printed later, gelatin silver print, Corcoran Collection (The Gordon Parks Collection), 2016.117.257
Gordon Parks: Camera Portraits from the Corcoran Collection

Gordon Parks, Flavio da Silva, Rio de Janeiro, 1961, gelatin silver print, Corcoran Collection (The Gordon Parks Collection), 2015.19.4670
Gordon Parks: Camera Portraits from the Corcoran Collection

Gordon Parks, Muhammad Ali, London, 1966, gelatin silver print, Corcoran Collection (The Gordon Parks Collection), 2015.19.4674
Gordon Parks: Camera Portraits from the Corcoran Collection

Gordon Parks, Self-Portrait, 1941, gelatin silver print, Purchased as the Gift of Alan and Marsha Paller, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen and Marc Andreessen via the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Raj and Indra Nooyi, Mitchell P. Rales, David M. Rubenstein, and Darren Walker in honor of Sharon Percy Rockefeller , 2021.61.1

Dive Deeper

Story

Poet Jason Reynolds Responds to a Photograph by Gordon Parks

The 2020–2022 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and New York Times bestselling author responds to Parks’s Washington D.C. Government Charwoman (American Gothic). 

Educator Resources

Uncovering America: Gordon Parks Photography

Encourage creative, critical, and historical thinking in your students. Featuring introductions, image sets, prompts, and activities for K-12 educators.

Podcast

Sound Thoughts on Art: Daniel Bernard Roumain and “American Gothic”

Composer Daniel Bernard Roumain works with performance poet Lady Caress to respond to Parks’s iconic photograph.

Events

December 14-15

Gordon Parks: Early Documentaries

Films

See three early films Parks made in the 1960's—Flavio, Diary of a Harlem Family, and The World of Piri Thomas—along with his later films Moments without Proper Names and Martin.

Organization
Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington

The exhibition is curated by Sarah Greenough, Senior Curator & Head of the Department of Photographs, National Gallery of Art 

Sponsors
The exhibition is made possible through the leadership support of the Trellis Fund.

Passes
Admission is always free and passes are not required

Banner detail: Gordon Parks, Husband and Wife, Sunday Morning, Detroit, Michigan (Bert Collins and Pauline Terry),  1950, printed later, gelatin silver print, Corcoran Collection (The Gordon Parks Collection), 2016.117.150