“segregation series” by gordon parks

07/17/12 — gordon parks, history, race, segregation, usa

Outside looking in. Mobile, 1956.

here’s a previously unreleased photo series by iconic photographer gordon parks.  it focuses on segregation in 1950s america through the lives of an alabama family.  some background from maurice berger:

These quiet, compelling photographs elicit a reaction that Mr. Parks believed was critical to the undoing of racial prejudice: empathy. Throughout his career, he endeavored to help viewers, white and black, to understand and share the feelings of others. It was with this goal in mind that he set out to document the lives of the Thornton family, creating images meant to alter the way Americans viewed one another and, ultimately, themselves.

More than anything, the “Segregation Series” challenged the abiding myth of racism: that the races are innately unequal, a delusion that allows one group to declare its superiority over another by capriciously ascribing to it negative traits, abnormalities or pathologies. It is the very fullness, even ordinariness, of the lives of the Thornton family that most effectively contests these notions of difference, which had flourished in a popular culture that offered no more than an incomplete or distorted view of African-American life.

check out some of the pics below and berger’s full article here (both via lens).