A New Film Shows How Gordon Parks Influenced Generations of Artists
Alex Greenberger, ARTnews
June 2021
Gordon Parks’s 1956 photograph of a Black woman and her child beneath a department store sign that reads ‘COLORED ENTRANCE’ is famous for a reason.
It is an elegant image, with a zigzag composition that carefully directs the eye, and yet it is also a painful one because it finds a way of rendering the structural racism of the American South so visibly. Viewers might find themselves wanting to stare at this photograph forever because of its lush color; they also feel as if they want to look away immediately because its subject matter is so appalling. One detail in this searing picture often gets overlooked: the woman’s slip, a strap from which dangles down her arm, puncturing her stately appearance. […]