Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Gordon Parks' 1950s Photo Essay On Civil Rights-Era America Is As Relevant As Ever

Gordon Parks' 1950s Photo Essay On Civil Rights-Era America Is As Relevant As Ever: The images, originally titled "The Restraints: Open and Hidden," were first taken for a photo essay for Life Magazine in 1956. The essay chronicles the lesser-seen daily effects of racial discrimination, revealing how prejudice pervades even the most banal and personal of daily occurrences. Parks doesn't photograph protests, rallies, acts of violence or momentous milestones in civil rights history. No, he prefers the quieter moments in and around the home.

Some photos focus on inequality -- a "colored" line at an ice cream stand or black children window shopping amongst all white mannequins. Others hint ominously at violence, as one child plays with a gun and another examines it solemnly. Such images are especially haunting in retrospect, considering the recent death toll of American black men in this country, over half a century after these photographs were taken.

Yet the majority of Parks' photos focus on the positive over the negative, showing a different breed of civil rights documentation.