Gordon Parks (1912-2006), Langston Hughes, Chicago, 1941. Gelatin silver print, 131/8 x 10 5/8 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Avalon Fund. Courtesy and © The Gordon Parks Foundation.
The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., has recently come into the possession of four important photographs taken by iconic 20th-century photographer Gordon Parks, coinciding with the recent exhibition Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940-1950. The photos, which come from The Gordon Parks Foundation, enhance the gallery’s Parks collection, particularly broadening its breadth of work covering the period of 1941 to 1950. The four photographs, which date back to the first 10 years of the artist’s career, include vintage portraits of Langston Hughes (1941) and Ingrid Bergman (1949) as well as two vintage photographs of Tuskegee airmen in training, both from 1943.
“These unique vintage prints, depicting his friend and mentor Langston Hughes, the actress Ingrid Bergman and two Tuskegee airmen photographed during World War II, reveal his rapid development from aspiring photographer searching for a style to the first African American photojournalist on staff at Life magazine,” says Philip Brookman, consulting curator for the department of photographs at NGA. “These pictures greatly enrich the gallery’s already significant holdings of Parks’ work and its growing collection of photographs by leading African American photographers.” —
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