Gordon Parks was an American photographer best known for documenting African Americans, civil rights, and poverty in the mid-1900s. PBS NewsHour just aired this 6-minute segment that looks into how the self-taught photographer used his camera as a tool to help share people’s stories with the world.
“Parks came to an understanding before he ever picked up a camera that it could be a tool for him to use to be able to express his own feelings about his life,” says Philip Brookman, curator of the current exhibition “Gordon Parks: The New Tide” at the National Gallery of Art.