Gordon Parks: The Photographer as Magician
- 2026-01-23
Gordon Parks, “Husband and Wife, Sunday Morning, Detroit, Michigan,” 1950/Photo: Gordon Parks. Courtesy of The Gordon Parks Foundation
Like a master illusionist, the American photographer stuns the audience with the magnitude of his tricks at his IMS São Paulo survey show.
A Black woman and a young girl stand in their Sunday best. The woman’s expression is grave, her gaze fixed toward the street, away from the neon sign hanging a few feet above them. The sign declares that the entrance beneath it is reserved for “colored people” only.
The photograph, made by Gordon Parks and titled “Department Store, Mobile, Alabama” (1956), was selected in 2024 as one of “The Twenty-Five Photographs That Defined the Modern Era” by a panel of experts convened by The New York Times Style Magazine. Enlarged to monumental scale, it now occupies a prominent wall on the first floor of “Gordon Parks: America Is Me,” on view at the Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS) in São Paulo through March 1.
