The camera is my weapon of choice': Gordon Parks' era-defining shots of segregation and those who defied it

"In a moment when content is being removed from cultural institutions across the United States, when there is resistance, even contempt, for anyone who tries to talk honestly about this history, this exhibit is both timely and urgent. Because it speaks to the way Parks confronted these very same circumstances at a time when there was no precedent for this kind of art as a weapon for change."

"The images he returned with were remarkable: intimate and vivid depictions of the daily disgrace of the Jim Crow south. They still feel prescient today. The photographs form the backbone of a new survey of Parks' work, opening this week at the Alison Jacques gallery in London and curated by Bryan Stevenson, the famed civil rights attorney."

"We are living at a time where there's tremendous retreat from the civil rights era, Stevenson tells me. In a moment when content is being removed from cultural institutions across the United States, when there is resistance, even contempt, for anyone who tries to talk honestly about this history, this exhibit is both timely and urgent."

In summer 1956, Life magazine sent Gordon Parks, its first Black staff photographer, to Alabama to document racial segregation following the Montgomery bus boycott. Parks, then in his early 40s, captured intimate and vivid depictions of Jim Crow South daily life. A new survey of his work from 1942-1967, curated by civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson at London's Alison Jacques gallery, showcases Parks' most active photographic period during acute American unrest. Stevenson emphasizes the exhibition's urgency amid contemporary historical revisionism, white nationalism, and censorship removing civil rights content from cultural institutions. Parks' photographs functioned as weapons for change during an unprecedented time, offering honest confrontation of racial injustice.

Read at www.theguardian.com