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Gordon Parks: Camera Portraits from the Corcoran Collection

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
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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
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Gordon Parks, Pastor Ledbetter, Chicago, 1953, printed later, gelatin silver print, Corcoran Collection (The Gordon Parks Collection), 2016.117.180
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Gordon Parks, Duke Ellington Listening to Playback, Los Angeles, 1960, printed later, gelatin silver print, Corcoran Collection (The Gordon Parks Collection), 2016.117.214
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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
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Gordon Parks, Muhammad Ali, 1966, printed later, gelatin silver print, Corcoran Collection (The Gordon Parks Collection), 2016.117.257
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Gordon Parks, Flavio da Silva, Rio de Janeiro, 1961, gelatin silver print, Corcoran Collection (The Gordon Parks Collection), 2015.19.4670
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Gordon Parks, Muhammad Ali, London, 1966, gelatin silver print, Corcoran Collection (The Gordon Parks Collection), 2015.19.4674
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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
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