Exhibition Marks 70 Years Since Gordon Parks’ Landmark Segregation Photos Published in ‘Life’ Magazine

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A group of Black children and one man stand outside an ice cream shop with a sign that reads "WHITE ONLY" on a window beside the entrance. The children appear to be looking inside the shop.

An exhibition commemorates the 70th anniversary of the landmark publication of Gordon Parks’ color images of the segregated South in Life magazine

Gordon Parks: The South in Color is is on view until June 13 at Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta in partnership with The Gordon Parks Foundation.

The exhibition brings together more than thirty photographs from Parks’ “Segregation Story” series which was published in Life magazine in the summer of 1956. The exhibit also includes both lesser-known works and some of Parks’ most recognized images, including At Segregated Drinking Fountain, Mobile, Alabama.

An elderly couple stands together outdoors beneath a blooming tree with pink flowers. The man has his arm around the woman, and both have calm expressions. Lush greenery surrounds them.

Three young Black girls stand and sit outside near a wooden chair; one leans her arms on the chair's back, looking quietly at the camera. Behind them is a vintage red and white car and a blurred green landscape.

The exhibition is curated by Dawoud Bey and is presented as part of a yearlong initiative focused on Parks’ influence on contemporary Black artists and writers. It is informed by Bey’s 2022 essay “The South in Color” from the expanded edition of Gordon Parks: Segregation Story (2022), which discusses Parks’ photographs taken around Mobile, Alabama in the summer of 1956 for Life magazine.

A Black man holds hands with three young Black girls as they walk past a chain-link fence with a sign that reads "WHITE ONLY." The scene is outdoors near a grassy field and utility poles.

Five people stand and sit on a rustic wooden porch. A woman smiles at the camera, while others, including children, stand or sit nearby. The house has weathered wood siding and simple furnishings.

In the essay, Bey writes about Parks’ artistic approach and states that “these photographs deserve as much consideration for the quality of their making as the mission that brought them into being.”

A man in a hat uses reins to guide a mule while working in a green, leafy field under a cloudy sky.

Two young girls stand barefoot in a large puddle on a dirt road; one bends down to touch the water while the other looks on. Trees, grass, and houses line the road under a cloudy sky.

A group of children play together outside among tall pine trees, climbing and balancing on wooden planks between the trunks, while others stand or watch nearby. The scene is lively and surrounded by greenery.

Parks photographed members of the Thornton family and their extended relatives, including the Causey and Tanner families, during this assignment. He used a handheld twin-lens Rolleiflex camera and chose to shoot in color, producing carefully composed square-format images that define the series. Bey describes how Parks’ “deliberate choices of tool, material, and sensibility lend the Black Southern presence, often under siege, a sense of lives fully and expressively lived.” Bey’s curatorial approach is presented as offering a renewed perspective on Parks’ work and artistic method.

Image credits: All photos courtesy of Jackson Fine Art.

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