Alabama bound …
When Life magazine sent the African American photographer Gordon Parks to create a photo essay, The Restraints Open and Hidden, exploring the impact of the Jim Crow laws in 1956 Alabama, he was well established as a pioneering voice. He had first made his mark at the magazine in 1948 capturing the secret world of a Harlem teen gang.
True colours …
Parks’s two weeks in Alabama were not without drama, including being chased by a white supremacist gang. His photography’s subject, however, was purposefully ordinary: families going about their day-to-day routines. He also used a medium that was radical in its everydayness: colour photography.
The other side …
Whether it’s women window-shopping or kids playing, Parks reveals why these families are very different from the majority. “Colored” signs label them and direct their movement, be it at the ice-cream parlour or the department store.
Hiding in plain sight …
In this image of a shop front, to white onlookers unrestricted by segregation, the words “white only” could easily be camouflaged amid the clamour of adverts for delicacies such as banana split and “ice milk”. However, Parks forces the racially designated drinking fountain centre stage, unused while black children wait for water at the allotted space.
Warning signs …
In 2017, Kendrick Lamar eulogised Parks in the video for Element, recreating his iconic shots of black Muslims, Muhammad Ali and this time in Alabama. The 1956 series forces us to reflect on what’s changed 60-plus years later, when the literal signs have been rendered invisible yet the inequalities persist.
Gordon Parks: Part One, Alison Jacques Gallery, WC1, to 1 August
