Gordon Parks’ photographs of Black Americans in the 1950s are essential viewing in London

When Gordon Parks picked up a camera in 1937, aged 25, Black Americans around him were processing the repercussions of the Civil War. In 1865, four million enslaved people were emancipated; while they attempted to build their lives over the ensuing decades, they were subjected to humiliating racial segregation laws, mob violence and lynching, and denied a vote.

Parks, born into poverty and segregation, was a witness to it all. After buying a Voigtländer Brillant camera from a Seattle pawn shop for less than $12, he taught himself to take photographs. In 1948, Parks was hired by Life magazine, the first Black staff member, writing articles to accompany his photo essays, which emphasised the dignity and resilience of his subjects.

Many of Parks’ vital works, including his Segregation in the South series and portrait of Dr Martin Luther King Jr as he delivered his landmark ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, have now been united in London in a curation at Alison Jacques gallery, overseen by social justice activist Bryan Stevenson.

Stevenson, who received the Martin Luther King Jr Nonviolent Peace Prize in 2018, and was named by Time as one of the world’s 100 most influential people in 2015, brings a sharp eye to his curation, which spans a 25-year period, from 1942 to 1967. The exhibition, titled ‘We Shall Not be Moved’, is named after the protest anthem that stemmed from the African American spiritual song ‘I Shall Not Be Moved’, indicating steely resolve.

For Stevenson, Parks’ role as a humanitarian becomes the central focus. ‘In some ways, Gordon Parks was a role model,’ he says. ‘He's helped me see the importance of narrative in advancing justice and the power of art to create spaces where you can impact both the mind and the heart. I love that he elevated the lived experience of so many people like me and he allowed us to see our struggles in a larger context. It was a joy to curate an exhibit that animates the power, dignity, strength and resolve of people who are oppressed but determined to be free.’

The scale of the works on show here renders them all the more powerful. Outside Looking In, taken of Black children looking through steel mesh at white children in a playground in Alabama in 1956, is emotive and striking. Department Store and Mr and Mrs Albert Thornton feel almost too intimate to view.

‘There is an inherent tension in wanting to educate people about the harm, degradation and brutality of bigotry and discrimination without completely presenting or defining people in terms of their victimisation,’ says Stevenson, pointing out that Parks was thoughtful in treading the line between exploitation and education. ‘Gordon Parks seemed to be aware of this challenge and his images were unusually effective because they depicted the brutality and anguish of exclusion and racism while still emphasising the dignity and beauty of the people excluded. Parks documented the harm of segregation but also the hope of those who were marginalised. You respect and admire the subjects in many of his photos because he's made you aware of the burdens they bear, but also their determination to persevere.’

Seen together, Parks’ photographs are an emotional tribute to this perseverance in the face of a seemingly casual everyday injustice. It runs through everything, from a child’s ice-cream cone to a student peering through a microscope. Adds Stevenson: ‘Through the lens of Gordon Parks, Black people could be beautiful, complex, joyous, grief-stricken, regal, triumphant, burdened and overwhelmed. He made the Black community fully human, which was atypical of the images most frequently presented, and especially uncommon in mainstream publications with white readers.’

For Parks, photography was the medium through which he could achieve the greatest impact. In 1970, when speaking to Eldridge Cleaver, an early leader of the Black Power organisation, The Black Panther Party, he commented: ‘You have a 45mm automatic pistol on your lap, and I have a 35mm camera on my lap, and my weapon is just as powerful as yours.’

'We Shall Not Be Moved' at Alison Jacques London from 5 March – 11 April 2026, alisonjacques.com