Anthony Bleck, a Cayuga Community College student, drove 32 miles from Fulton, New York to the Syracuse University Art Museum. He traveled to the “‘Homeward to the Prairie I Come:’ Gordon Parks” for his class taught by Melissa Johnson, his art professor.
“We talk about what wasn’t being represented in art and what’s here,” Bleck said. “And now it’s here in a really big way, and that’s really impressive.”
The Parks exhibit is at the SU Art Museum until Dec. 10. Parks, a photographer, writer, poet, musician and composer, left an indelible mark on the magazine and entertainment industry.
Throughout his career, Parks was known for capturing African American life, civil rights movements and poverty. He served as the first African American photographer on LIFE Magazine’s staff and wrote and directed a Hollywood studio feature film.
He explored subjects including segregation in his home state of Kansas, the Black experiences and a Brazilian favela, an impoverished neighborhood. His photos highlight stories such as a resourceful but sick boy who lived with his family in a favela in Rio de Janeiro.
The gallery walls are strewn with various photographs including portraits of Malcolm X and pictures of the Harlem Renaissance, Kansas, Brazil and Europe.
“One of the points about diverse culture is contemporary art talking about the past and politics and society and a lot of stuff in here is contemporary,” Bleck said. “It’s new art and it’s different.”
The exhibit traveled 1,245 miles from the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art at Kansas State University to the SU Art Museum. It features 71 photographs, five poems and six books, in addition to the music playing in the gallery, composed by Parks himself.
Emily Dittman, interim director at the SU Art Museum, said organizing the exhibition began about three years ago. The museum regularly borrowed work from the Art Bridges Foundation’s collections. Subsequently, the Foundation informed them about their traveling exhibitions and financial grants for the Parks exhibit, which was still in the early stages of organization.
The exhibit was co-curated by Aileen June Wang and Sarah Price, employees of the Beach Museum. It features hand-selected photos Parks donated to the museum in 1973. Syracuse marks the first stop of the exhibit’s tour across the country.
Lars Jendruschewitz | Photo Editor
“’Homeward to the Prairie I Come’: Gordon Parks Photographs” includes images of varying sizes to help viewers distinguish between larger themes and supporting details. The exhibition also includes seating for visitors to pause and reflect after viewing its heavy content.
“The 1970s gift to K-State is the first that the artist selected and donated to a public institution,” Wang said. “Parks treated the donation as an opportunity to tell his audience how he wanted to be seen as an artist and what ideas and stories mattered most to him.”
Melissa Yuen, chief curator at the SU Art Museum, said the exhibit was meant to elicit a multi-sensorial experience of Parks’ multifaceted career. Many photos are emotionally charged, which is why a seating area is available within the exhibit, Yuen said.
“A lot of Parks’ images, especially the ones that appeared in LIFE Magazine, are really heavy in content because they deal with the most pressing civil rights injustices,” Yuen said.
Yuen said visitors can take a moment to reflect in the seating area, which is furnished with couches and accompanied by the sounds of music from “Shaft’s Big Score!,” composed by Parks, and “Half Past Autumn Suite,” composed by Irvin Mayfield in honor of Parks.
The exhibit also features Parks’ work from LIFE Magazine during his two-decade tenure, including “Harlem Gang Leader,” a photo essay published in 1948 that follows a 17-year-old gang leader. Another piece, “The Redemption of the Champion” published in 1966 captures Muhammad Ali, the acclaimed Black boxer and activist.
“Parks told stories emphasizing the universality of human concerns and values,” Wang said. “He urged his audience to consider a person as an individual, instead of stereotyping those with different ethnicities or skin colors as ‘the other.’”
The exhibit’s structuring of photo sizes, groupings and attached poems all carry a deeper context. Larger photos represent a theme with the surrounding smaller images supplementing it.
“The curators let the viewer know as you enter the show that Parks used size to organize his images. That was an important detail to focus on as you walk through the gallery,” Johnson said.
Though the poems and photos were predetermined, SU Art Museum was still allowed to take a creative approach to the presentation. Visitors are welcomed by two lesser-known photos, deliberately chosen to challenge any preconceived notions about Parks’ work, Yuen said.
SU Art Museum will host programs to coincide with the exhibit including film screenings, orchestral performances and art displays this semester.
“Many of Parks’ works were groundbreaking at the time of their creation, and they have retained their edge and relevance to this day,” Wang said.
