Gordon Parks

Untitled
1950

Working with LIFE Magazine, Parks returned to Fort Scott, Kansas to track down and photograph eleven of his junior high classmates to consider the impact of segregated schooling. The majority of the photos from this series were taken in Kansas but he also traveled to see some of his classmates that had moved away -- to Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Saint Louis. The Parks Foundation has digitized an image from this series which I'm certain is a portrait of the man who is seen from behind in the Whitney's print (see below). I haven't been able to find the names of the people photographed here, but from the caption provided by the foundation, this image was taken in Chicago. This cover story on segregation was shelved and never published by LIFE. In 2015, the MFA Boston exhibited many of these works together in the exhibition "Gordon Parks: Back to For Scott." Image url: https://www.gordonparksfoundation.org/gordon-parks/photography-archive/back-to-fort-scott-1950?view=slider#10

Working with LIFE Magazine, Parks returned to Fort Scott, Kansas to track down and photograph eleven of his junior high classmates to consider the impact of segregated schooling. The majority of the photos from this series were taken in Kansas but he also traveled to see some of his classmates that had moved away -- to Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Saint Louis. The Parks Foundation has digitized an image from this series which I'm certain is a portrait of the man who is seen from behind in the Whitney's print (see below). I haven't been able to find the names of the people photographed here, but from the caption provided by the foundation, this image was taken in Chicago. This cover story on segregation was shelved and never published by LIFE. In 2015, the MFA Boston exhibited many of these works together in the exhibition "Gordon Parks: Back to For Scott." Image url: https://www.gordonparksfoundation.org/gordon-parks/photography-archive/back-to-fort-scott-1950?view=slider#10

Not on view

Date
1950

Classification
Photographs

Medium
Gelatin silver print

Dimensions
Sheet: 6 5/8 × 9 5/8in. (16.8 × 24.4 cm)

Accession number
2006.26

Edition
Vintage

Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Photography Committee

Rights and reproductions
Courtesy of and © The Gordon Parks Foundation

API
artworks/27711

Exhibitions

Where We Are: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1900–1960

Apr 28, 2017–June 2, 2019

Gordon Parks
7 works in the collection

View artist