Gordon Parks: “Homeward to the Prairie I Come” Digital Exhibition Catalog

Authors

Aileen Wang, Kansas State UniversityFollow
Mark Crosby, Kansas State UniversityFollow
Linda Duke, Kansas State UniversityFollow
Katherine Karlin, Kansas State UniversityFollow
Cameron Leader-Picone, Kansas State UniversityFollow
Sarah Price, Kansas State UniversityFollow
Karin Westman, Kansas State UniversityFollow

Files

Streaming Media

Description

This open access digital exhibition catalog is part of the Kansas State University (K-State) Gordon Parks Project, initiated by the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art and K-State English. It presents new research about Parks’s activities in Kansas based on materials found in participating Kansas institutions, including 128 curated photographs donated by Gordon Parks to K-State. The contributions in this volume illuminate Parks’s relationship to his home state of Kansas as a source of reference and inspiration. They debunk the myth that Kansas was merely the place where Gordon Parks was born before moving on to greatness elsewhere.

This book provides a series of intimate biographical snapshots of pivotal periods in the life of Gordon Parks. These short essays taken in their entirety, provide a dazzling and selected biography on the life of one of the most important photographers who lived and worked in the 20^th and 21^st century. These essays written by a range of writers and curators are engaging and are arranged thematically over the span of fifty years. The format of the book offers a new and unique method of connecting art, photography, film and biography. In reading this, the reader begins to imagine the life of a photographer who envisioned justice and attempted to realize it through his photographs and storytelling through his personal experiences. The power of his personal story is integrated with the personal, cultural, and politics of a time when he lived and worked in the field of photography addressing the challenges and triumphs of black people in America.

This is a book that adds wonderfully to Gordon Parks life as it introduces new questions, specifically about sexual abuse in the Learning Tree and the “underdiscussed” activities of Parks life.

--Deborah Willis, Ph.D. University Professor Chair, Department of Photography & Imaging New York University - Tisch School of the Arts Director, Center for Black Visual Culture

ISBN

978-1-944548-42-1

Publication Date

6-2-2022

Publisher

New Prairie Press

City

Manhattan, KS

Editor

Aileen June Wang

Keywords

Gordon Parks, Kansas history, photography, African American literature, African American film, digital humanities

Disciplines

Art and Design | Art Practice | Arts and Humanities | Digital Humanities | Film and Media Studies | Interdisciplinary Arts and Media

Recommended Citation

Wang, Aileen; Crosby, Mark; Duke, Linda; Karlin, Katherine; Leader-Picone, Cameron; Price, Sarah; and Westman, Karin, "Gordon Parks: “Homeward to the Prairie I Come” Digital Exhibition Catalog" (2022). NPP eBooks. 45.
https://newprairiepress.org/ebooks/45

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.