On
Wednesday, November 4th, Salon 94 Freemans will present Segregation Story by
Gordon Parks (1912-2006), who took the images while on assignment as a staff
photographer for Life Magazine in 1956. The show marks the first solo
exhibition of the work in New York. Life Magazine originally published
twenty-six of the photographs with text by Robert Wallace, creating a watershed
moment in the civil rights struggle.
Parks’s
images vividly chronicle the day-to-day life of the Thornton, Causey, and
Tanner families facing the realities of living in the Jim Crow South. The
poignant photo essay proved to be a national catalyst for opposition to the
systemic racial inequalities in the South and directly impacted the lives the
subjects. The images were thought to be lost for decades, but in 2012 The
Gordon Parks Foundation recently came across hundreds of transparencies, most
never seen before. According to Salon 94’s Jeanne Greenberg Rohaytn “The images
deserved to be seen in New York, especially given the dramatic role that images
and their dissemination are currently playing in the conversation about race in
this country.” Marilyn Minter, the contemporary artist, adds “The images
knocked me out when I saw them exhibited at the High Museum in Atlanta. They
brought me back in time and captured a truth about what it was like to live
there. It’s clear to me that he was risking his life taking some of those
pictures."
The
photographs on view include humble family portraits and scenes at home
alongside devastating images of neatly dressed African-American men, women, and
children being forced to submit to second-class status. A sedate image of Mr.
& Mrs. Albert Thornton seated at home beneath their wedding portrait taken
fifty years earlier contrasts with a photo of his elegant daughter being forced
to enter a movie theater via the “Colored” entrance. The Thornton’s
great-grandchildren are portrayed playing with the puddles outside their home
after a rainstorm and in another image are seen standing outside the chain link
fence surrounding a “Whites Only” playground complete with Ferris wheel.
Info
Venue name:
Salon 94 Freemans
Address: 1
Freeman Alley , New York
Cross
street: between Rivington and Stanton Sts
Opening
hours: Tue 1–6pm, Wed–Sat 11am–6pm
Transport:
Subway: F to Delancey St; J, Z, M to Delancey–Essex Sts
Event
phone: 212) 529-7400
Duration: Tuesday
November 24 2015 - Friday December 18 2015
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