The atmosphere of crime, 1957 / Gordon Parks ; Sarah Hermanson Meister, [editor] ; with essays by Nicole R. Fleetwood, Bryan Stevenson ; Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr., series editor.
Life (Chicago, Ill.) Gordon Parks and the Atmosphere of Crime.
Notes:
"A selection of photographs from this publication will [were scheduled to] be featured in the installation Gordon Parks and 'The Atmosphere of Crime,' on view at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, from May 2020 through September 2021"--Colophon. "All photographs in the Plates section are in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York"--Page facing title page. Includes bibliographical references.
Contents:
The lens of Gordon Parks : a different picture of crime in America / Bryan Stevenson -- Policing and the production of crime / Nicole R. Fleetwood -- Framing crime in photographs / Sarah Hermanson Meister -- Life, September 8, 1957 : "Crime in the U.S." and "The atmosphere of crime."
Summary:
"When Life magazine asked Gordon Parks to illustrate a recurring series of articles on crime in the United States in 1957, he had already been a staff photographer for nearly a decade ... [He] embarked on a six-week journey that took him and a reporter to the streets of New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Unlike much of his prior work, the images made were in color ... Parks rejected cliches of delinquency, drug use, and corruption, opting for a more nuanced view that reflected the social and economic factors tied to criminal behavior and a rare window into the working lives of those charged with preventing and prosecuting it. Transcending the romanticism of the gangster film, the suspense of the crime caper, and the racially biased depictions of criminality then prevalent in American popular culture, Parks coaxed his camera to do what it does best: record reality so vividly and compellingly that it would allow Life's readers to see the complexity of these chronically oversimplified situations"--Dust jacket flap.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.