Jackson Fine Art presents their spring exhibition Gordon Parks: The South in Color organized in partnership with The Gordon Parks Foundation. The exhibition is timed to commemorate two important milestones – the 70th anniversary of the landmark publication of Parks’ images of the segregated South in Life magazine and the 20th anniversary of the founding of The Gordon Parks Foundation. The South in Color will present more than thirty photographs from the artist’s Segregation Story series and debut a brand-new portfolio published by the Foundation. The exhibition brings together many of Parks’ images not previously shown in the gallery, alongside some of his most recognized such as At Segregated Drinking Fountain, Mobile, Alabama, to offer a fresh look at the series, and deepen its emotional and historical resonance.
The South in Color is curated by acclaimed American photographer Dawoud Bey, and presented in alliance with the Foundation’s yearlong celebration of Parks and his impact on the current generation of Black artists and writers. Our exhibition brings to life Bey’s 2022 essay from the expanded edition of Gordon Parks: Segregation Story (2022), in which he writes about the visual poetry of Parks’ photographs taken in and around Mobile, Alabama in Summer 1956 for Life magazine. Dawoud Bey is a groundbreaking artist and MacArthur Fellow who examines the Black past and present. His photographs and film installations have been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States and Europe. Bey’s work has been the subject of numerous solo museum exhibitions, including Dawoud Bey: An American Project organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art (2020-2022), and Elegy at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (2023-2024) and New Orleans Museum of Art (2025-2026); and Dawoud Bey: Street Portraits at the Denver Art Museum (2024-2025).
In a career that spanned more than fifty years, photographer, filmmaker, musician, and author Gordon Parks (American, 1912–2006) created a groundbreaking body of work that made him one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. Beginning in the 1940s, he documented American life and culture with a focus on social justice, race relations, the civil rights movement, and the African American experience. Born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, Kansas, Parks was drawn to photography as a young man. Despite his lack of professional training, he won a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1942; this led to a position with the photography section of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in Washington, D.C., and, later, the Office of War Information (OWI). By the mid-1940s, he was working as a freelance photographer for publications such as Vogue, Glamour, and Ebony. Parks was hired in 1948 as a staff photographer for Life magazine, where more than two decades he created some of his most notable work. In 1969 he became the first African American to write and direct a major feature film, The Learning Tree, based on his semi-autobiographical novel. His next directorial endeavor, Shaft (1971) helped define a genre then referred to as Blaxploitation films. Parks continued photographing, publishing, and composing until his death in 2006.
Gordon Parks : The South in Color
April 2 – June 13, 2026
Opening Reception: April 2 | 6-8PM
Jackson Fine Art
3122 E Shadowlawn Ave NE
Atlanta, GA 30305
www.jacksonfineart.com
