Gordon Parks

Glimpses Toward Infinity features Gordon Parks's most innovative and artistically dynamic works to date - evocative images of objects found in nature arranged in imaginary landscapes painted by the artist himself - alongside his most recent poems, including a moving homage to the Oklahoma City bombing. Parks has gracefully captured the fragile splendors of land and sea, including flowers, leaves, and shells, in photographs that speak of timelessness - of infinity.

Once upon a time, there were three little girls. Charity. Justine. Anna. Individually, they’re lethal weapons. Together? They’re the force to be reckoned with at Liberty Investigations. Their bodies may be made for sin, but everything else is for kicking ass… Justine Petite. Pretty. Potentially deadly. Justine O’Neill may look like the kind of girl who’s never carried anything more hardcore than a designer purse, but she’s an expert in small arms and street fighting, with a rap sheet to prove it. Now Justine’s been assigned to guard Nigel Carter, CEO of Baron Industries—a company with ties to a past she’d rather forget. Her mission: accompany Nigel to Peru, where Baron’s new plant is proving highly unpopular. Nowhere in the brief was she instructed to react to in-flight turbulence by engaging in a hotter-than-hell kiss with her gorgeous client…Nigel’s hardly a Guns & Ammo kind of guy, but Justine’s tough, weapons-ready persona and sultry looks have him aching to get his hands on much more than her .38. The sexual heat between them is explosive, irresistible, and very, very dangerous. Because now someone has kidnapped Nigel’s daughter, and the only way to get her back is to take the fight right to the enemy’s door, where any distraction could be fatal, and falling in love is the riskiest pursuit of all…

Arias in Silence encompasses the breadth of Gordon Park's compelling new photographic work. Now eighty, he has developed a new vision--fragmentary found objects appear against abstract watercolor backgrounds, evoking buttes the American Southwest, the Great Prairies, the rolling surf of the Atlantic, or the landscapes of Chinese scroll paintings. More than two dozen of his original, previously unpublished poems accompany the photographs and express the wisdom, love, yearning, and drive that are the core of Park's artistic life.

A black youth in a small town in Kansas finds himself the only witness to a murder.

This oversized book of photography and verse reflects many aspects of the highly emotional, uncommonly eventful life of the author: the confusion and poverty he experienced as a child growing up in Fort Scott, Kansas; the bigotry, drug addiction, terror, chaos and blatant inhumanity to which he was exposed as a rising journalist and photographer; the beauty and sophistication with which his professional career is associated today.

Gordon Parks is most famous for being the first black director in Hollywood. But before he made movies and wrote books, he was a poor African American looking for work. When he bought a camera, his life changed forever. He taught himself how to take pictures and before long, people noticed.

Presents the autobiography of Gordon Parks, a photographer, writer, and director who worked his way from homelessness to success. Explores Parks's ability to break down barriers to become the first black photographer at "Vogue" and "Life," and the first black screenwriter and director in Hollywood. Describes his relationships with Ingrid Bergman, Roberto Rossellini, Malcom X, Elijah Muhammad, and Muhammad Ali. Also examines his different life experiences in Minnesota; Washington, D.C.; Paris; Rio; and Harlem.

Gordon Parks is a living legend. At age eighty-four, he can look back on accomplishments in many fields, including fiction, poetry, film, and music. But first and foremost, Parks is a photographer - a man whose indelible photojournalism, including two decades at Life magazine, has made him one of this century's most esteemed image makers. Accompanied throughout by Parks's recollections and reflections, the nearly 300 images collected in Half Past Autumn give us the full measure of this photographer's achievements for the first time. In the early 1940s, Parks launched his career with a remarkable array of documentary images for the Historical Section of the Farm Security Administration, including his unforgettable American Gothic photograph of Ella Watson, a black charwoman in Washington, D.C. During the same period, Parks landed fashion assignments at Vogue (Harper's Bazaar had rejected him because they wouldn't hire blacks), which paved the way for his later forays into the world of Parisian haute couture.

High School level

"The first African American photographer to be hired full time by Life magazine, Gordon Parks was often sent on assignments involving social issues that his white colleagues were not asked to cover. In 1950 he returned on one such assignment to his hometown of Fort Scott in southeastern Kansas: he was to provide photographs for a piece on segregated schools and their impact on black children in the years prior to Brown v. Board of Education. Parks intended to revisit early memories of his birthplace, many involving serious racial discrimination, and to discover what had become of the 11 members of his junior high school graduation class since his departure 20 years earlier. But when he arrived only one member of the class remained in Fort Scott, the rest having followed the well-worn paths of the Great Migration in search of better lives in urban centers such as St. Louis, Kansas City, Columbus and Chicago. Heading out to those cities Parks found his friends and their families and photographed them on their porches, in their parlors and dining rooms, on their way to church and working at their jobs, and interviewed them about their decision to leave the segregated system of their youth and head north. His resulting photo essay was slated to appear in Life in the spring of 1951, but was ultimately never published. This book showcases the 80-photo series in a single volume for the first time, offering a sensitive and visually arresting view of our country's racialized history.Gordon Parks (1912-2006) was born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, Kansas. The self-taught photographer also found success as a film director, author and composer. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts and over 50 honorary degrees."--