Hidden amongst businesses and restaurants along a bustling street in Pleasantville is an art gallery that is free to the public. At 48 Wheeler Ave in Pleasantville, The Gordon Parks Foundation houses dozens of Gordon Parks’ photographs. The current exhibit at the foundation is all about Cuban history and culture and features photographs Parks took in Cuba during his time at Life magazine. The subject of many of these photographs is Cuban fashion specifically.
The front entrance of the Gordon Parks Foundation, displaying the José Parlá Cuba collection.
Photo by Leanna Ward
Born into poverty and segregation in Kansas in 1912, Gordon Parks made a name for himself through fashion photography, before changing the subject matter of his photos to real-life situations. Gordon Parks was an immensely impactful artist of multiple mediums; he began photographing American life and culture in the 1940s. His images were focused on race relations and the civil rights movement. In 1948 he became the first black person to work at Life magazine when he started as a staff photographer. It was during his time at Life magazine that he created his most well-known works. Parks took photographs, made films, published writing, and composed music until his death in 2006. Gordon Parks is known to many as the most significant American photographer of the 20th century.
As seen from inside the exhibit: “A Cuban Way With Styles” Photographs by Gordon Parks
LIFE, May 1958.
The Gordon Parks Foundation website, the foundation “permanently preserves the work of Gordon Parks, makes it available to the public through exhibitions, publications, and programs and supports artistic and educational activities that advance what Gordon described as ‘the common search for a better life and a better world.'”
Parks co-founded the Foundation in 2006 along with his longtime friend and editor at Life magazine, Philip B. Kunhardt, Jr. The foundation was created to preserve Parks’ creative work and support the next generation of artists to be motivated by social justice.
Currently, the foundation has an exhibit of paintings by an American painter and filmmaker, José Parlá. Parlá has created abstract paintings for 25 years. His paintings explore the multiplicity of cities that have served as crossroads in his life. The focus of José Parlá’s exhibit is his work relating to Cuba. In addition to being a prolific painter, he is a fellow of the Gordon Parks Foundation. Parlá’s 30-minute film, The Wrinkles Of The City, La Habana (2012), is also on display at the foundation. This film features photographic and audio portraits of twenty-five senior citizens who lived through the Cuban Revolution. Many of Parlá’s paintings hang around the exhibit, mixed with Gordon Parks’ photographs.
As seen from the exhibit: Collection of paintings by José Parlá
Today, archives of Parks’s works are spread amongst galleries and museums; including The Gordon Parks Foundation, The Gordon Parks Museum (Fort Scott, Kansas), Wichita State University, the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and the Smithsonian.
A new exhibit will open at the foundation’s gallery December 11. This exhibition will present photographs shot by Ralph Ellison in the 1940s in New York. These photographs will be shown alongside a selection of images made by Parks at the same time. The Gordon Parks Foundation is open Wednesday – Friday, 10 a.m.- 4 p.m.