Gordon Parks: Born Black
A Personal Report on the Decade of Black Revolt 1960-1970
Steidl / The Gordon Parks Foundation, 2024
Edited by Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr. and Michal Raz-Russo
Text by Jelani Cobb, Nicole R. Fleetwood, Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr. and Michal Raz-Russo
Book design by Holger Feroudj / Steidl Design
304 pages, 202 images, 25 x 29 cm, Hardback, English, € 58.00
ISBN 978-3-96999-228-9
Originally published in 1971, Gordon Parks’ Born Black was the first book to unite his writing and his photography. It was also the first to provide a focused survey of Gordon Parks’ documentation of a crucial time for the civil rights and Black Power movements. Today, more than 50 years later, this expanded edition of Born Black illuminates Gordon Parks’ vision for the book and offers deeper insight into the series within it. The original publication featured nine articles commissioned by Life magazine from 1963 to 1970—some never-before published—supplemented with later commentary by Parks and presented as his personal account of these important historical moments. Born Black includes the original text and images, as well as additional photographs from each series, spreads from the 1971 book, early correspondence, reproductions of related Life articles, and new scholarly essays. The nine series selected by Gordon Parks for Born Black—a rare glimpse inside San Quentin State Prison; extensive documentation of the Black Muslim movement and the Black Panthers; his commentaries on the deaths of civil rights leaders Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.; intimate portrait studies of Stokely Carmichael, Muhammad Ali and Eldridge Cleaver; and a narrative of the daily life of the impoverished Fontenelle family in Harlem—have come to define his legendary career as a photographer and activist. This reimagined, comprehensive edition of Born Black highlights the lasting legacy of these projects and their importance to our understanding of critical years in American history. Co-published by Steidl with The Gordon Parks Foundation.
GORDON PARKS - Biography
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. Gordon Parks was hired in 1948 as a staff photographer for Life magazine, where for more than two decades he created groundbreaking 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. Gordon Parks continued photographing, publishing and composing until his death in 2006.
STEIDL
