GORDON PARKS 📷 I AM YOU | PART 1 JANUARY 11 - FEBRUARY 10, 2018 @jackshainman 524 WEST 24TH STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10011 Opening reception for the exhibition: Thursday, January 11th from 6 – 8 PM at 524 West 24th Street. What I want. What I am. What you force me to be is what you are. For I am you staring back from a mirror of poverty and despair, of revolt and freedom. Look at me and know that to destroy me is to destroy yourself. Gordon Parks wrote these words in 1967. Whether through photographs, words or music, Gordon gave a voice to the sometimes voiceless and demonstrated the transformative power of self-expression. His photographs transcend art, history, race and culture and have endured to stand the test of time. Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr., Executive Director of the Gordon Parks Foundation Jack Shainman Gallery is pleased to announce Gordon Parks: I Am You | Part 1. As a photographer, film director, composer, and writer, Gordon Parks (1912-2006) was a visionary artist whose work continues to influence American culture to this day. In collaboration with the Gordon Parks Foundation, this first half of a two-part exhibition will focus on Parks’ lesser-known bodies of work, such as his elegant compositions of artists in their studios, as well as his timeless fashion photography. Though Parks is best known for his photographs documenting much of the civil rights era, he spent many years as a freelance photographer for a variety of publications, working across many subjects. Among his lesser-known works featured in the exhibition are a series of portraits of artists in their studios, including Helen Frankenthaler, Alexander Calder and Alberto Giacometti. A 1951 group of images taken in Giacometti’s studio transforms the artist into one of his creations – skeletal and draped in shadow, yet still dominating the composition, even from the background. I Am You also includes examples from Parks’ fashion works taken during the 1950s and 60s in New York. He showcased a signature aesthetic, which photography historian and Gordon Parks Foundation board member Deborah Willis calls street style. . . #supportblackart #gordonparks #jackshainman (at Jack Shainman Gallery)