CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 1/18/2016

Gordon Parks: Segregation Story

"Department Store, Mobile, Alabama" (1956) is reproduced in two remarkable publications by STEIDL. One is the monumental, 5-volume, slipcased Gordon Parks: Collected Works, and the other is Parks' deeply affecting Segregation Story. Maurice Berger writes, "Beyond their esteemed place in Parks' oeuvre, the segregation pictures are among the most important and efficacious civil rights photographs... The pictures Parks took for Life achieved one of his abiding goals as an artist and activist: to make visible the nuances of a story that many chose to ignore or dismiss. In the end, they offer nothing less than an alternative view of an epic struggle, reminding us that it was fought—and won—on many fronts, from the public square to the private home."