A Radically Prosaic Approach to Civil Rights Images

[romp]

Gordon Parks’s portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Albert Thornton Sr., an older black couple in their Mobile, Ala., home in 1956, appears to have little in common with the images we have come to associate with civil rights photography.

It is in color, unlike most photographs of the movement. Its subject matter was neither newsworthy nor historic, unlike

Comments

[13chapters]

Wow, those photos are beautiful. Thank you for sharing. And for once, comments are really good. (I'm not sure if the NYT is moderating them or what.)

[tiddlywinks103]

Gorgeous.

[mandrill]

Absolutely stunning photographs!

Here's a picture of the photographer Gordon Parks taken in 1963. He is also known for directing the movies "Shaft" (1971) and "Leadbelly" (1976). Parks died in 2006 at age 94. See his wiki for more info about this amazingly talented man: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Parks

[romp]

I only learned about him when he died. I'm glad to see his work is still getting attention.

[ten_of_swords]

These are wonderful!

[sobota]

it's so weird seeing these really, really obvious signs of segregations (the coloured/whites fountain, or the coloured entrance). it seems hard to believe that these things existed, even though we know they did.

[nesmith]

The thing that really gets me down is how a lot of people yearn for a return to that time and aren't shy about saying it.