Published in association with the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

"A Bulfinch Press Book."

Accompanies the exhibition, organized and held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Sept. 10, 1997-Jan. 11, 1998, and nine other museums, Feb. 14, 1998-Dec. 2001.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 354-356).

Gordon Parks is a living legend. At age eighty-four, he can look back on accomplishments in many fields, including fiction, poetry, film, and music. But first and foremost, Parks is a photographer--a man whose indelible photojournalism, including two decades at Life magazine, has made him one of this country's most esteemed image makers. Accompanied throughout by Parks's recollections and reflections, the nearly 300 images collected in Half Past Autumn give us the full measure of this photographer's achievements for the first time. In the early 1940s, Parks launched his career with a remarkable array of documentary images for the Historical Section of the Farm Security Administration, including his unforgettable American Gothic photograph of Ella Watson, a black charwoman in Washington, D.C. During the same period, Parks landed fashion assignments at Vogue (Harper's Bazaar had rejected him because they wouldn't hire blacks), which paved the way for this later forays into the world of Parisian haute couture. It was Parks's hard-hitting work for Life magazine--beginning in 1948 with a series on Harlem gangs--that made him truly famous, and these images remain as fresh, powerful, and uncompromising as ever. Also here are photo-essays on segregation in the South, the Black Panthers, a black family in Harlem, and the life of a destitute child in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. Parks's European images--of kings and peasants, street scenes and fashion tableaux--are equally arresting, and his photographs of Duke Ellington, Muhammad Ali, Ingrid Bergman, Langston Hughes, Leonard Berstein, Alexander Calder, and many other notables reveal his ability to capture the essence of his subjects. The book culminates with a portfolio of Parks's recent abstract work in color--vivid, dreamlike images that achieve a mystical intensity. Throughout the book, Parks's engaging anecdotal text gives us the stories behind the images--as well as an inspiring memoir of his own life and his struggle against racism. Born in Kansas, Parks has his childhood interrupted by the death of his mother, and by age fifteen he was homeless on the wintry streets of St. Paul, Minnesota. Buffeted by bigotry and hatred, he recognized early the need to fight back and to "choose his weapon" wisely. Parks found that weapon in a $7.50 pawnshop camera. With tenacity, dignity, and humanity, he persevered to become one of the outstanding artists of our time. Parks is the premier photographic chronicler of America's great racial divide as well as a role model for generations of Americans. A concluding essay by Philip Brookman, Curator of Photography and Media Arts at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, illuminates Parks's groundbreaking early work and its impact on his personal vision--back cover.

SACFinal081324