Red Jackson, Harlem, New York
Gordon Parks American
Not on view
The most prominent African-American photographer and journalist of the 1950s and 1960s, Gordon Parks has documented the experiences of under-represented people and communities throughout his career, while simultaneously producing celebrity portraiture, fashion photographs, and news pictures. This image of Harlem gang leader Red Jackson looking pensively out of a broken window at his "turf" is one of a series Parks made for Life magazine in 1948. The photo essay was the first to look closely and soberly at the reality of life in Harlem at mid-century, and, in that respect, anticipates the more strident civil rights exposés by Parks and other photojournalists in the 1960s.
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