בידספיריט | Gordon Parks: Collected Works .Steidl,

Gordon Parks: Collected Works .Steidl, 2012. 5 volume in near ”like new” condition, - “These images and words are a gathering of individuals, events, places, conflicts and dilemmas that confronted me as I shifted from course to course in pursuit of survival. Some star-coloured, others, painted with rage, fall like rain in my memory. They all simmer down to what I remember, forgot, and what at last I know.” Gordon Parks’ photography. It is the most extensive publication to document his legendary career. Widely recognized as the most important and influential African-American photographer of the twentieth century, Parks combined a unique documentary and artistic style with a profound commitment to social justice. Working first for the Farm Security Administration and later for Life magazine, he specialized in extended narrative picture stories on difficult subject matter. Covering crime, poverty, segregation, the politics of race and class, and controversial personalities, Parks became legendary for his ability to meld penetrating insight with a lyrical aesthetic. He was thus able to introduce a broad and diverse public to people, issues and ideas they might otherwise have ignored. Parks was remarkably versatile, travelling the world to photograph news events and fashion, as well as the worlds of art, literature, music, theatre and film. Later in life, he reconceived his vision in fundamentally personal and poetic terms, producing colour photographs that were allusive rather than descriptive, symbolic rather than literal. This set was published in 2012 to celebrate Gordon Park's hundredth anniversary of birth. The quality of the set couldn't be better. This set is a combined work of the German publisher Steidl and the Gordon Parks Foundation. The standard of the production is simply excellent. Books are made in Germany. Most of the prints are of very good quality, especially the black and white ones ( most of the plates are in black and white). The books and box are very elegant, very strong. The first four volumes show a selection of five decades of Gordon Parks' work as a photographer and same of the photos were printed in a book for the first time. The last volume shows scans of Park's work at Life Magazine, where he was the first black photographer ever. No small task considering that the year was 1948. The quality of the scans is very good. The American culture produced many Renaissance men such as Sam Shepard, Woody Allen and others. Gordon Park's was one of those Renaissance men. He was a photographer, pianist, composer, film maker, writer, poet... He directed 1971's ”Shaft”, now a classic. He worked as a pianist in bars, he worked as a porter in trains ( where he met Robert Capa ). He was a real, original artist and was no graduate of the likes of Central Martins in London. The diversity of Park's experiences show in his photos and this collection is a treasure worth ordering because of its physical quality and the quality, diversity and originality of its many hundreds of photos. This is a box of a photographer who was clearly outside the box. His photographs were about poverty, crime, segregation, politics and other social issues but also about fashion, arts and so on. Later in life his photographs became more abstract and he played more with colours.