Collected Works
"I was down at MoMA where the Gordon Parks Foundation was hosting the Gordon Parks Centennial Gala, "Gordon Parks One Hundred Years."I met Gordon Parks in the late 90s when Gloria Vanderbilt invited me to a dinner they were giving for him at ... I think ... MoMA. I know I wrote about it afterwards because I was starry-eyed. Parks and Vanderbilt were two very glamorous people in terms of public image and they had stature in presence too. But they were just powerful (but real) individuals.Much is made of Parks' photographs, and deservedly. But New York is a place where the Ego Has Landed and remained intact. Fame and celebrity that graces (wrong word, right idea) the talent the city attracts often takes a piece of the heart and the humanity in exchange. Not true with Mr. Parks. He was his work. Vanderbilt is like that too. She and Parks were close friends. Night and Day you are the one.The Gordon Parks Foundation was founded by Gordon Parks and Philip Kunhardt Jr. Its Executive Director is Peter Kunhardt Jr. They honored three people whose work "has changed the landscape of film, photography and music. Each has excelled in a field Gordon cared deeply about; each shares his commitment to making the world a better place."David Patrick Columbia & Jeffrey Hirsch - www.NYSOCIALDIARY.com Sept 09/01/12.  http://www.nysocialdiary.com/node/1908115/printGORDON PARKS: Centennial Honoring the Legendary African American Photographer."Gordon Parks is the most important black photographer in the History of Photojournalism. Long after the events that he photographed have been forgotten, his images will remain with us, testaments to the genius of his art, transcending time, place and subject matter."- Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.In honor of the 100th Anniversary of the birth of Gordon Parks, the Howard Greenberg Gallery in collaboration with the Gordon Parks Foundation will present two simultaneous exhibitions of his work. Contact: Gordon Parks, Ralph Ellison, and "Invisible Man" curated by Glenn Ligon and Gordon Parks: Centennial, which includes nearly 40 works spanning five decades of the artist's career beginning in the early 1940s, including some of the legendary photographer's most seminal images. Most noteworthy in the exhibitions will be a number of color prints from Segregation Story, 1956.The exhibitions will coincide with Gordon Parks Collected Works, a five-volume book on his photographs. (Steidl, 2012). The book will be the most extensive publication to document Gordon Parks's legendary career.The Gordon Parks Foundation permanently preserves the work of Gordon Parks, makes it available to the public through exhibitions, books, and electronic media, and supports artistic and educational activities that advance what Gordon described as "the common search for a better life and a better world." The Foundation is a division of the Meserve-Kunhardt Foundation.A number of other exhibitions in New York will coincide with the exhibition at Howard Greenberg Gallery including Gordon Parks: 100 Years at the International Center for Photography through January 6, 2013; Gordon Parks: 100 Moments at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture through December 1, 2012; Gordon Parks: Crossroads at the Tisch School of the Arts, Gulf+Western Gallery, from September 4 through September 25, 2012; and Gordon Parks: A Harlem Family 1967 at the Studio Museum of Harlem from November 7, 2012 through February 2013.Many thanks to the Howard Greenberg Gallery for images and text above; and to Diana Revson, Director of External Affairs for The Gordon Parks Foundation, for keeping me informed over the years of the Foundations artistic and educational activities that advance what Gordon Parks described as "the common search for a better life and a better world." - Elizabeth Avedon, Sept 11, 2012, http://elizabethavedon.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/gordon-parks-centennial-honoring.html"Though he was quite famous for being a filmmaker and the first African-American photographer for Life magazine, until this year, the 100th anniversary of his birth, most of his photographs, except for a few iconic images, were not widely known. That's changing this week as the publisher Gerhard Steidl's famed presses print "Gordon Parks: Collected Works," a comprehensive five-volume collection of Mr. Parks's photographs. Theclick.us Sept 27, 2012. http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/27/gordon-parks-a-lasting-love/