Born in 1912 in Kansas.

Died in 2006 in New York.


Raised in a poor family of fifteen children, of which he was the youngest, Gordon Parks left home after his mother died when he was fourteen. He did whatever odd jobs came his way and began teaching himself photography.

In 1942, he gained a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship, which he spent as an apprentice at the Farm Security Administration, directed at the time by Ron Stryker. In the same period, he took his famous photo American Gothic, a portrait of Ella Watson, a black cleaning lady posing in front of the American flag, which came as a major shock to white, post-World War Two America.

In 1948, he became a permanent contributor to Life magazine, a collaboration the he pursued brilliantly over two decades.


Gordon Parks' work was presented at Rencontres d’Arles in 2013: An American Story at the Magasin Electrique.