Gordon Parks: The New Tide: Early Work 1940?1950. This item is unavailable.Gordon Parks: The New Tide: Early Work 1940?1950

Focusing on new research and access to forgotten pictures, The New Tide, Early Work 1940–1950 documents the importance of these years in shaping Gordon Parks’ passionate vision. The book brings together photographs and publications made during the fi rst and most formative decade of his 65-year career.

During the 1940s Parks’ photographic ambitions grew to express a profound understanding of his social, cultural and political experiences. From the fi rst photographs he published in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and his relationship to the Chicago Black Renaissance, to his mentorship with Roy Stryker and his breakthrough work for America’s infl uential picture magazines―including Ebony and Life ―this book traces Parks’ rapid evolution from an accomplished, self-taught practitioner to a groundbreaking artistic and journalistic voice.

We are with the new tide. We stand at the crossroads. We watch each new procession. The hot wires carry urgent appeals. Print compels us. Voices are speaking. Men are moving! And we shall be with them... Richard Wright, 12 Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States , 1941

Gordon Parks (1912–2006) was a photographer, filmmaker, musician and author whose 50-year career focused on American culture, social justice, race relations, the civil rights movement and the Black American experience. Born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, Kansas, Parks was awarded the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1942, which led to a position with the Farm Security Administration. By the mid-1940s he was working as a freelance photographer for publications such as Vogue, Glamour and Ebony. Parks was hired in 1948 as a staff photographer for Life magazine, where for more than two decades he created ground-breaking work. In 1969 he became the first Black American to write and direct a major feature film, The Learning Tree, based on his semi-autobiographical novel, and his next directorial endeavor, Shaft (1971), helped define a film genre. Parks continued photographing, publishing and composing until his death in 2006.