Gordon Parks and the FSA

The distinguished photographer and film maker Gordon Parks was born in Kansas, but his legacy was the legacy of Southern history, and he made coming to terms with that history as an African-American an essential part of his life's work as a photographer.

Parks died in 2002, but a new book of his work for the Farm Service Administration (FSA), called Fields of Vision: The Photographs of Gordon Parks, is just out from the Library of Congress and Giles Publishing company.

In celebration of its publication the New York Times has a feature on Parks, including a portfolio of the images from this book, on its LENS blog, HERE.

Parks' work for the FSA documents Americans deep in the Depression and African-Americans deep in both the Depression and the experience of American apartheid we call Jim Crow. I'm certainly buying a copy of this book, and I encourage you to do the same.