More than 70 color transparencies from photographer Gordon Parks' landmark 1956 trip through the segregated South are on display at Jackson Fine Art in Buckhead.
'Gordon Parks: The South in Color' features images from the assignment that became his epochal Life magazine photo essay documenting the daily reality of segregation in Mobile, Alabama, centering on the Thornton family.
Gallery owner Anna Walker Skillman has a long history with Parks' work. When the color transparencies were discovered in an old storage bin in 2011, the Gordon Parks Foundation contacted Skillman for their first exhibition in 2012. She later dovetailed the celebrated 'Gordon Parks: Segregation Story' exhibition at the High Museum in 2015.
The most iconic image from the series shows Joanne Thornton Wilson and her niece Shirley Anne Kirksey standing beneath a neon 'colored entrance' sign in Mobile. Over a decade later, the work remains urgent and relevant.
