The Gordon Parks Foundation Celebrates 20 Years

The Gordon Parks Foundation is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a yearlong series of exhibitions, publications, fellowships and events, all of which will highlight how the legacy of Gordon Parks (1912–2006) continues to inform contemporary artistic practice in new and innovative ways. Since its founding in 2006 to steward Parks’ multifaceted work as a photographer, musician, writer and filmmaker, the Foundation has steadily grown and expanded its capacity to provide crucial support to emerging, mid-career and late-career artists across a wide variety of disciplines. This focus on interdisciplinarity is at the heart of both the Foundation and the legacy of Parks himself, who believed unreservedly in the power of art to be a catalyst for social change and to illuminate the human condition.

This anniversary year allows for a retrospective look at what the Foundation has accomplished over the past two decades, such as its sustained program of annual museum exhibitions paired with publications from Steidl that have significantly broadened the public understanding of Parks’ work. A new library at the Foundation’s headquarters in Pleasantville, New York, featuring a complete set of publications from Steidl, was recently completed. The anniversary will also highlight how the Foundation continues to provide resources to artists in the form of grants, fellowships, scholarships and publications. In the coming weeks The Gordon Parks Foundation Fellows in Art, The Gordon Parks Foundation Genevieve Young Fellow in Writing and the inaugural Gordon Parks Foundation Fellow in Music will all be announced. The Foundation’s 2026 Gala, which will continue its history of celebrating key figures working at the intersection of the arts and social justice, will take place on May 19th, with honorees and co-chairs to be announced in the coming weeks. Finally, the robust slate of exhibitions that have been planned—at the Foundation and with its gallery and museum partners around the world—will reveal the continued relevance and enduring insight of Parks’ work to our contemporary moment.

“Gordon Parks and my grandfather, Phil Kunhardt, co-founded The Gordon Parks Foundation in 2006,” said Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr., Executive Director of The Gordon Parks Foundation. “They were lifelong friends and colleagues who died just weeks apart. Gordon was a true pioneer: he was the first Black photographer to work for Vogue and Life magazine and the first Black filmmaker to direct a Hollywood feature film, both monumental breakthroughs—not just for Gordon but the world he helped change. Today, our work at the Foundation builds on Gordon’s legacy, both reflecting and amplifying his words that his camera was his weapon of choice to fight racism and injustice.”

Photo of Gordon Parks © Susan Plunket, Courtesy of The Gordon Parks Foundation

A Few Exhibitions not to be missed:
Gordon Parks: America is Me (Brazil)
Gordon Parks: America Is Me opens October 4, 2025, at IMS Paulista in São Paulo, marking the largest-ever Gordon Parks exhibition in Latin America and the first retrospective in Brazil. Featuring around 200 photographs from the 1940s to the 1970s, the exhibition also includes films, magazines, books, and other materials, highlighting Parks’s work as a photographer, filmmaker, musician, and poet.

The show presents iconic portraits of key figures in the Black movement, including Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Muhammad Ali, alongside major series such as Back to Fort Scott (1950) and Segregation in the South (1956). Curated by Janaina Damaceno with the support of The Gordon Parks Foundation, the exhibition explores Parks’s enduring legacy documenting Black life, civil rights, and the struggle for dignity and equality in America.

Open until March 1, 2026, the exhibition offers a rich program of activities and a catalog of images and texts.
More information about the exhibition

Woman and Dog in Window, Harlem, New York, 1943. Photo by Gordon Parks / Courtesy of and © The Gordon Parks Foundation

Gordon Parks: We Shall Not be Moved (London)
Alison Jacques Gallery, in partnership with The Gordon Parks Foundation, presents Gordon Parks: We Shall Not Be Moved, a solo exhibition honoring the Foundation’s 20th anniversary. Curated by Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, the show offers a focused selection of Parks’s most powerful work from 1942 to 1967, highlighting his lifelong commitment to social justice and human dignity.

Stevenson’s curation includes iconic photographs such as American Gothic, Washington, D.C. (1942), images from the 1963 March on Washington, and key works from Parks’s Segregation Story series commissioned by Life magazine. These images document the realities of segregation, poverty, and the struggle for civil rights, while also revealing the strength and resilience of Black communities.

The exhibition title references the protest anthem “We Shall Not Be Moved,” emphasizing Parks’s enduring message of resistance and hope. Through his camera, Parks challenged stereotypes and offered a more compassionate, truthful portrayal of American life. His work remains profoundly relevant today, especially in a moment marked by renewed efforts to erase or silence Black voices and history.
More information about the exhibition

At Segregated Drinking Fountain, Mobile, Alabama, 1956. Photo by Gordon Parks / Courtesy of and © The Gordon Parks Foundation

Gordon Parks: The South in Color (Atlanta)
Curated by celebrated photographer Dawoud Bey, this exhibition features selections from Gordon Parks' celebrated 1956 series, Segregation Story, which documented the effects of Jim Crow laws on daily lives of Black Americans. The exhibition will feature text adapted from Bey's essay, “Gordon Parks: The South in Color,” which originally appeared in Gordon Parks: Segregation Story (Expanded Edition), published by The Gordon Parks Foundation and Steidl in 2022. On view at Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta starting April 2.
More information about the exhibition

Untitled, Shady Grove, Alabama, 1956. Photo by Gordon Parks / Courtesy of and © The Gordon Parks Foundation

Gordon Parks (New York)
This exhibition at Jack Shainman Gallery, examines some of Parks’ best-known works through the individuals that knew him. Parks’ friends, colleagues and subjects of his work will hand select images and pair these with their personal refl ections, revealing unexpected insights into Parks’ process, passions and presence. (Fall 2026)

Anastasia Samoylova: Atlantic Coast

By Anastasia Samoylova

Publisher : Aperture and the Norton Museum of Art

2025 | 144 pages

Anastasia Samoylova: Atlantic Coast opens a vast, quietly unsettling portrait of the American East Coast — one in which nostalgia, dislocation and transformation are sewn into the landscape itself. In this new monograph, Samoylova retraces the route pioneered by Berenice Abbott in 1954, journeying from Florida to Maine to revisit the places Abbott once documented, and to observe what has become of them decades later. Her images — in vivid color and stark black and white — reveal the tension between myth and reality, between promises of progress and the traces of decay or displacement.

Where once small towns and coastal communities had a certain stillness, Samoylova finds change carved into facades and roadside signs, into suburban sprawl and shuttered shopfronts. She frames these scenes with a photographer’s patience and a poet’s sensitivity — capturing abandoned diners, empty motels, decaying houses, ghostly intersections. At the same time, there is stubborn life: occasional portraits of people, wildlife, reminders that behind every sign of decline, someone, something endures.

Her book does not simply document physical places. It traces the shifting contours of identity, belonging and memory in a nation where the open road has long symbolized freedom — and where that ideal has become tangled with consumerism, environmental degradation, and socio-economic upheaval. Through Atlantic Coast, Samoylova asks whether the “American Dream” remains intact, or if it has fractured along with the towns her car passes through.

Reading this volume is to experience a slow, attentive journey — as a witness, as a traveller, as someone invited to reconsider what America has become. Her photographs linger, subtly unsettling the viewer’s assumptions about beauty, progress and decline. In its silence and restraint, the book whispers that memory, identity and place are fragile — and that every road carries stories worth listening to.

Coreen Simpson: A Monograph

By Coreen Simpson

Publisher : Aperture

2025 | 224 pages

Coreen Simpson: A Monograph is the first major book dedicated to the influential photographer and jewelry designer whose career spans more than fifty years. As the second volume in the Vision & Justice Book Series—a groundbreaking initiative created by Dr. Sarah Lewis and coedited with Drs. Leigh Raiford and Deborah Willis—the monograph celebrates Simpson’s enduring impact on visual culture.

Simpson began her career as a journalist before turning to photography, capturing the richness of Black life, fashion, and identity. Her portraits of icons such as Grace Jones, Muhammad Ali, and Toni Morrison, as well as her iconic B-Boys series from the 1980s, showcase her eye for style, pride, and self-expression. The book also features her later work with collage and overpainting, alongside the story of her celebrated jewelry line, including the iconic Black Cameo worn by Rosa Parks and Rihanna.

Featuring original essays by leading voices such as Bridget R. Cooks, Rujeko Hockley, Awol Erizku, and Doreen St. Félix, as well as an in-depth interview by Deborah Willis, Coreen Simpson: A Monograph offers a multifaceted portrait of an artist whose work continues to shape the worlds of photography, fashion, and Black cultural history.

Daido Moriyama: Quartet

By Daido Moriyama

Publisher : Getty Publications

2025 | 440 pages

Explore the groundbreaking early work of Daido Moriyama, one of Japan’s most radical photographers, with this collectible, slipcased photobook.

Daido Moriyama (b. 1938) is one of Japan’s most renowned and prolific photographers. His diverse projects often focus on urban landscapes, exploring light and shadow, and form and abstraction. Using a handheld camera and high-contrast black-and-white film, Moriyama captures Tokyo’s chaotic streets and clandestine underbelly, revealing the darkness and strangeness beneath the surface.

Daido Moriyama: Quartet is a vital anthology of the four seminal photobooks that form the foundation of Moriyama’s career as a photographer: Japan: A Photo Theater, A Hunter, Farewell Photography, and Light and Shadow. Spanning the fifteen years during which he honed his techniques and unveiled his distinctive vision, these photobooks were originally released as limited editions in Japan and represent some of the most daring ventures in photographic publishing history. Edited by Mark Holborn, this compilation includes excerpts from Moriyama’s diaries, journals, and memoranda, offering intimate glimpses into the core of his creative process. Presented in a slipcase, this volume is essential for all Moriyama fans and anyone passionate about photography and visual culture.

All About Daido Moriyama

Critical Photojournalism: Contemporary Ethics and Practices

By Tara Pixley, Judy Walgren

Publisher : ‎ Routledge

2025 | 226 pages

An essential introduction to the complexities of visual representation, this book offers a critical new framework for understanding and practicing photojournalism in a global digital context.

Critical Photojournalism guides readers through a variety of ethical, technical and business skills, plus the mental health, self-care and safety considerations necessary to thrive in the field. Drawing on their extensive industry and teaching experience, the authors provide real-world advice on how to navigate the demands of the profession while addressing the impact that photojournalism has on society and ways that photojournalists can mitigate harm. Consideration is given to understanding and disrupting implicit bias and power structures in newsrooms, as well as issues around access, working in breaking news environments and balancing informed consent with varying media laws around the world. In accessible language, this book highlights the importance of collaboration and community engagement in contemporary photojournalism and encourages students to adopt a decolonial approach to their work. Readers will learn to balance the needs for accuracy and thoughtfulness with the priorities of a global, social-media-engaged audience.

This is a key textbook for those seeking a nuanced introduction to visual journalism and/or a fresh approach to their craft. This book is supported by a website which can be accessed at www.criticalphotojournalism.com. The website includes a full-length bonus chapter on video and photojournalism, interviews with professional visual journalists, further tips and tools, and a glossary of key terms.

The Gordon Parks Foundation Celebrates 20 Years

More information about the Gordon Parks Foundation

Selected Books