Gordon Parks - Store Front, Mobile, Alabama, 1956

The southern United States in the fifties.
A country store with its façade studded with billboards.
The commission was placed with Gordon Parks in 1956 by LIFE Magazine. The initial caption was:
"Combination grocery and beauty parlor is the recreation center
for the Tanner children."

The reportage depicted the hard daily life of a Black American family, the Tanners; a two-room shack for a family of six. Few housing options in the segregated America of the fifties.

Color prepress tirage on RC satin paper.
Medium resolution, archival digital print. Later print, 2009.
Format: 21 x 28.6 cm with margins.
In very good condition, label and annotations on the reverse.
Presented on a 24 x 30 cm matte board.

Gordon Parks (1912–2006) was a photographer, filmmaker, photojournalist
and African American pioneer activist; he left an indelible mark on American culture by documenting the lived experiences of Black Americans, poverty, civil rights and social injustice. Born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, Kansas, Parks learned photography self-taught after buying his first camera from a pawnshop.

During a career spanning more than fifty years, he broke numerous racial barriers and made his creative work a vehicle for social change.