Study Sets of Photographs

Collection of eleven "study sets" that represent selections from series created by Parks, chiefly 1942-1976. Photographic prints in the sets include images reproduced by the Gordon Parks Foundation, 2012-2021, as well as examples of prints created by Parks during his professional life, 1942-2006.

The study sets from the 1940s include Washington D.C., a series created for the United States Farm Security Administration that documents the life of Ella Watson, an African American custodial worker for the federal government in 1942; Mamie and Kenneth Clark, created for Ebony magazine on the married psychologist team of Mamie Phipps Clark and Kenneth Bancroft Clark in 1947, whose research on the effects of segregation on Black children influenced the decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954); and Harlem Gang Leader, Park's first project for Life magazine in 1948, which documented Leonard "Red" Jackson, a young black man and leader of the Midtowners gang.

The study sets from the 1950s include Back to Fort Scott, an ultimately unpublished series for Life where Parks revisited his childhood hometown and documented the lives of his junior high school classmates; Invisible Man, a series for Life in 1952 based on the novel of the same name published that year by Ralph Ellison where Parks sought to visually draw passages from the novel by creating images of a friend on the streets of Harlem; Segregation in the South, a series for Life in 1956 that chiefly documented the lives of an African American sharecropping family in Alabama as well as "separate but equal” facilities in public transportation between Brimingham, Alabama, and Nashville, Tennessee; and Crime, a series that supported a recurring set of articles in Life magazine in 1957 on crime in the United States.

The study sets from the 1960s include Civil Rights, photographs for Life in 1966 that document the growing Civil Rights Movement as well as the Black Muslim movement and the leadership of the Nation of Islam, including Malcolm X; and Harlem, a series for Life in 1967 that focused on the Fontenelle family, a West Indian immigrant family struggling with poverty, alcoholism, and domestic violence.

Study sets that straddle the 1960s and 1970s include The Flávio Story, a series on poverty in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1961 and 1976, which documents Brazilian boy Flávio da Silva and his family for Life, and Gordon Parks X Muhammad Ali, a series of portraits of the heavyweight boxer for Life, 1966 and 1970.

Prints in the collection made by Parks during his lifetime were bequeathed to The Gordon Parks Foundation. Prints reproduced and distributed by the Gordon Parks Foundation include gelatin silver prints by Griffin Editions and inkjet prints by Adamson Editions.