Gordon Parks: The Atmosphere of Crime, 1957

Guardian

Editors

Photographer Gordon Parks took a six-week journey throughout the US, from New York to Chicago to San Francisco to Los Angeles, to portray an unseen picture of crime in the country for Life Magazine in 1957... The photographs provided a richly-hued, cinematic portrayal of a largely hidden world of violence, police work, and incarceration, depicted with empathy and candor... Parks rejected clichés of delinquency, drug use, and corruption, instead opting for a more nuanced view of the social and economic factors tied to criminal behaviour.

L'Oeil de la Photographie

Noteworthy for its bold aesthetic and sophistication...challenge[s] pervasive stereotypes about criminality in mainstream media.

Art Newspaper

Tom Seymour

The series, when published, exposed mainstream understandings of black poverty, marginalisation and, crucially, how black citizens were treated by US police. They served to counteract enduring media stereotypes of black criminality, forcing the readers of Life to reassess their beliefs about an experience that even today garners little attention in US media.

Atlantic

Bill Shapiro

Gordon Parks, Life magazine’s first black photographer, revolutionized what a crime photo could look like...These are not only the most beautiful crime photos you have ever seen, but, quite possibly, the most important.

Vanity Fair

Laura Regensdorf

This slim, well-timed volume revisits a series that the 'Life' photographer shot in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, which subtly reframed the narrative around incarceration and crime. Published by Steidl and the Gordon Parks Foundation, in collaboration with MoMA, the book features essays that connect the historical dots, along with Parks’s photos of a still-changing world.

Dazed

Miss Rosen

Avoiding the hyper stylised noir aesthetics that defined popular depictions of gang life at the time, Parks created an intimate portrait of the harrowing reality for Black families systematically cut off from equal opportunities for employment, housing, education, and health. But the truth about Black lives did not resonate with his editors [at LIFE], who reframed the piece around a sensationalistic narrative of “urban violence” which still persists today. It wasn’t until 2017, 11 years after Parks’ death, that the work was finally reexamined in Gordon Parks: The Making of an Argument (Steidl), a book exploring the vast discrepancy between the media’s distorted, fear mongering edit, and the artist’s vision, which had been erased.

Cultured

Jacoba Urist

Amid protests over the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade and others—and a national reckoning with police brutality and institutional racism—the work of mid-century photographer Gordon Parks, who died in 2006, feels pressing, with a newly released monograph that depicts racial injustice with urgent, aesthetic power.

Cultured

Jacoba Urist

Amid protests over the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade and others—and a national reckoning with police brutality and institutional racism—the work of mid-century photographer Gordon Parks, who died in 2006, feels pressing, with a newly released monograph that depicts racial injustice with urgent, aesthetic power.

Collector Daily

Blake Andrews

As a visual technician, Parks was superb. Working mostly at night and in shifting chaotic scenes, he possessed a knack for clarity built on years of photojournalistic practice.

AnOther

Belle Hutton

The Atmosphere of Crime features a selection of previously unpublished photographs from the series, as well as the original images that made up the searing Life story. Parks was tasked with investigating crime in the US and took photographs...a series looking at racial inequality in the USA...

TIME

Miss Rosen

[P]rovides an in-depth study of this historic body of work [...] Parks’ photographs told a different story, one that examined the underlying suffering, despair and fear of marginalized groups further exacerbated by police and prisons

Art Newspaper

The Atmosphere of Crime, 1957 traces Park's' early reportage as Life magazine's first black staff photographer. From across the US, Parks published image after image of black poverty, marginalization, addiction--and the constant, leering presence of police violence. Sixty years on, his images continue to offer a counter-narrative to enduring and racist representation of black lives.

Washington Post

Sebastian Smee

With his camera, Gordon Parks humanized the Black people others saw as simply criminals...Parks’s photographs present a more insightful, delicate and disinterested view. They remind us that an atmosphere is not the same as a narrative. One is complex, pervasive, inchoate and, like a fog, it can lift. The other is linear. Like an obsession, it keeps corkscrewing ahead, leaving all kinds of damage in its wake.

Brooklyn Rail

Yínká Elújuba

He was really a Renaissance man. Part of the mission of the foundation in keeping him relevant today is showing him as a really important American artist who was successful in bridging the gap between creating work that educated but was at the same time artistic, regardless of the medium. I

Brooklyn Rail

Re'al Christian

There is no question that the book is relevant today amid far-reaching conversations on policing in America. But to say that this book is prescient or timely is ultimately reductive—labeling it so merely reflects the white gaze. As the essays elucidate, the problems of crime and over-policing in disenfranchised communities have existed for centuries.

New York Times

Luc Sante

Parks, then a staff photographer, shadowed detectives in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, recording patrol cars, dark streets, raids, arrests, heroin injections, morgues, prisons. He deploys bright patches of color against mostly dark backgrounds, along with artful lighting and cropping, to suggest the ubiquitousness of the machinery of crime. The photos are undeniably authentic and specific, but suspects’ faces are blurred while the gestures are broad, making them seem archetypal.

BuzzFeed

Kate Bubacz

Offer[s] groundbreaking insight into the era's methods of policing. Most notably, the manner in which Parks approached his subjects set a new standard for crime scene photojournalism — presumed criminals were documented with an obvious sense of anonymity to protect their innocence until proven guilty, while police officers were captured with striking clarity to crystalize their identities and tactics.

Photo Eye

Blake Andrews

Parks’ photographs shine a spotlight on criminal justice and race relations circa 1957, cutting through the darkness to highlight how much has changed, and how much hasn’t. Steidl’s production is top-notch as usual, reproducing Parks’ Kodachromes with understated fidelity. By the time the reader reaches the concluding section, a facsimile spread of the original Life magazine essay, it feels as if something inside has shifted.

Globe and Mail

Nathalie Atkinson

Revisit the colour photos taken by Life’s first African-American staff photographer for a 1957 series about crime. Featuring many previously unpublished photographs from his original reportage, the images challenge prevailing and racially biased assumptions around criminality and incarceration.

Musee

Editors

In 1957, as the first African American Staff Photographer for Life Magazine, Gordon Parks, set off on his six-week journey to bring a unique view of Poverty, Crime and Humanity to his readers from the Streets of New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. Parks, well know for his trail-blazing blaxploitation films like Shaft (1971), shook audiences with his eight page essay originally published as “The Atmosphere of Crime” and now for the first time, the secret world on the fringes of society can be seen in Color featuring Photographs by Gordon Parks never seen before. Parks reveals a complex society, an American Culture of vivid and empathetic imagery.

Apollo

Cassie Packard

Gordon Parks’s photographs bear powerful witness to Black lives in America...

New York Times

Guy Trebay

Gordon Parks was the Godfather of Cool. His gifts propelled him to a pioneering career as a photographer and filmmaker. His taste made him an enduring avatar of style.