New & Forthcoming Books by Gordon Parks

Gordon Parks: Segregation Story

Published by Steidl.
Foreword by Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr., Brett Abbott. Introduction by Charlayne Hunter-Gault. Text by Maurice Berger.

In September 1956, Life magazine published a photo-essay by Gordon Parks entitled "The Restraints: Open and Hidden," which documented the everyday activities and rituals of one extended African American family living in the rural South under Jim Crow segregation. One of the most powerful photographs depicts Joanne Thornton Wilson and her niece, Shirley Anne Kirksey, standing in front of a theater in Mobile, Alabama, an image which became a forceful "weapon of choice," as Parks would say, in the struggle against racism and segregation. While 26 photographs were eventually published in Life and some were exhibited in his lifetime, the bulk of Parks' assignment was thought to be lost. In 2011, five years after Parks' death, The Gordon Parks Foundation discovered more than 70 color transparencies at the bottom of an old storage bin marked "Segregation Series" that are now published for the first time in Segregation Story.

PUBLISHER
Steidl

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 10 x 11.5 in. / 112 pgs / illustrated throughout.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 2/28/2015
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2014 p. 12   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9783869308012 TRADE
List Price: $45.00 CAD $60.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

Invisible Man: Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison in Harlem

Published by Steidl/The Gordon Parks Foundation/The Art Institute of Chicago.
Foreword by Peter W. Kunhardt Jr., Douglas Druick. Introduction by Matthew S. Witkovsky, John F. Callahan. Text by Michal Raz-Russo, Jean-Christophe Cloutier.

Parks and Ellison collaborated on two historic photo-essays, now published in full for the first time

PUBLISHER
Steidl/The Gordon Parks Foundation/The Art Institute of Chicago

BOOK FORMAT
Clth, 9.75 x 11.5 in. / 128 pgs / 79 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 6/28/2016
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2016 p. 5   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9783958291096 TRADE
List Price: $45.00 CAD $60.00

AVAILABILITY
Out of stock

Gordon Parks: Collected Works

Published by Steidl.
Edited by Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr. and Paul Roth. Text by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Deborah Willis, Maurice Berger, Barbara Baker Burrows, Paul Roth, and Gordon Parks.

This five-volume collection surveys five decades of Gordon Parks' photography. It is the most extensive publication to document his legendary career. Widely recognized as the most important and influential African-American photographer of the twentieth century, Parks combined a unique documentary and artistic style with a profound commitment to social justice. Working first for the Farm Security Administration and later for Life magazine, he specialized in extended narrative picture stories on difficult subject matter. Covering crime, poverty, segregation, the politics of race and class and controversial personalities, Parks became legendary for his ability to meld penetrating insight with a lyrical aesthetic. He was thus able to introduce a broad and diverse public to people, issues and ideas they might otherwise have ignored. Parks was remarkably versatile, travelling the world to photograph news events and fashion, as well as the worlds of art, literature, music, theatre and film. Later in life, he reconceived his vision in fundamentally personal and poetic terms, producing color photographs that were allusive rather than descriptive, symbolic rather than literal.

PUBLISHER
Steidl

BOOK FORMAT
Slip, clth, 5 vols, 10.5 x 12 in. / 1084 pgs / illustrated throughout.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 11/30/2012
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2014 p. 14   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9783869305301 TRADE
List Price: $185.00 CAD $250.00

AVAILABILITY
Out of stock

Gordon Parks: A Harlem Family

Published by Steidl.
Edited by Thelma Golden, Elizabeth Gwinn, Lauren Haynes. Foreword by Raymond J. McGuire.

A Harlem Family 1967 honors the legacy and the work of late iconic artist and photojournalist Gordon Parks, who would have turned 100 on November 30, 2012. The exhibition catalogue is co-published by The Studio Museum in Harlem and The Gordon Parks Foundation and features approximately 80 black-and-white photographs of the Fontenelle family, whose lives Gordon Parks documented as part of a 1968 Life magazine photo essay. A searing portrait of poverty in the United States, the Fontenelle photographs provide a view of Harlem through the narrative of a specific family at a particular moment in time.

PUBLISHER
Steidl

BOOK FORMAT
Clth, 9.75 x 11.5 in. / 112 pgs / illustrated throughout.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 1/15/2013
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2014

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9783869306025 TRADE
List Price: $40.00 CAD $54.00

AVAILABILITY
Out of stock

Gordon Parks: Back to Fort Scott

Published by Steidl.
Foreword by Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr. Introduction by Isabel Wilkerson. Text by Karen Haas.

The first African American photographer to be hired full time by Life magazine, Gordon Parks was often sent on assignments involving social issues that his white colleagues were not asked to cover. In 1950 he returned on one such assignment to his hometown of Fort Scott in southeastern Kansas: he was to provide photographs for a piece on segregated schools and their impact on black children in the years prior to Brown v. Board of Education. Parks intended to revisit early memories of his birthplace, many involving serious racial discrimination, and to discover what had become of the 11 members of his junior high school graduation class since his departure 20 years earlier. But when he arrived only one member of the class remained in Fort Scott, the rest having followed the well-worn paths of the Great Migration in search of better lives in urban centers such as St. Louis, Kansas City, Columbus and Chicago. Heading out to those cities Parks found his friends and their families and photographed them on their porches, in their parlors and dining rooms, on their way to church and working at their jobs, and interviewed them about their decision to leave the segregated system of their youth and head north. His resulting photo essay was slated to appear in Life in the spring of 1951, but was ultimately never published. This book showcases the 80-photo series in a single volume for the first time, offering a sensitive and visually arresting view of our country's racialized history.
Gordon Parks (1912–2006) was born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, Kansas. The self-taught photographer also found success as a film director, author and composer. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts and over 50 honorary degrees.

PUBLISHER
Steidl

BOOK FORMAT
Clth, 10 x 11.5 in. / 144 pgs / 80 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 5/26/2015
Out of stock indefinitely

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2015 p. 33   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9783869309187 TRADE
List Price: $45.00 CAD $60.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available