Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francisco is pleased to present Gordon Parks: Higher Ground, a solo exhibition of over sixty works by one of the most important photographers of the 20th century. The gallery’s second solo exhibition for Parks, on view from February 4 through April 2, 2016, will commemorate his photo essays on the Civil Rights Movement.
Gordon Parks (1912 - 2006) was the first black photographer to work at Life magazine. The show will include hallmarks from this period including the essays Invisible Man, 1952; Segregation Story, 1956; Duke Ellington, 1960 The March on Washington, 1963; The Nation of Islam, 1963; Muhammad Ali, 1970; and The Black Panthers, 1970. Parks’ empathy and charisma enabled him to gain access into his subject’s world matched by few photographers. Higher Ground focuses on a period of strife and turmoil in American history. The show coincides with the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, as well as the recent milestones of the Civil Rights Act, 1964, and the Voting Rights Act, 1965.