Photographers [Oo] Gordon Parks | Paris, 1950-1952
Gordon Parks, Paris, 1951
“I needed Paris. It was a feast, a grand carnival of imagery, and immediately everything there seemed to offer sublimation to those inner desires that had for so long been hampered by racism back in America. For the first time in my life I was relaxing from tension and pressure. My thoughts, continually rampaging against racial conditions, were suddenly becoming as peaceful as snowflakes. Slowly a curtain was dropping between me and those soiled years.
Paris became my beautiful mistress, seducing me with Bach, Mozart and Brahms, Proust, Sartre, Camus and others I hadn’t bothered to stop and listen to.
I was moving through centuries of history, and not unaware of the possibility of its help in shaping my future. Being a part of it was like feeling at once young and old.”
Gordon Parks, Voices in the Mirror: An Autobiography, 1990
Gordon Parks, Paris, Place de la Concorde, 1950
Gordon Parks, American teens in Paris, 1952
Gordon Parks, American teens in Paris, 1952
Gordon Parks, Paris, 1950
Gordon Parks, Paris, Tour Eiffel, 1950
Gordon Parks, Beggar Man, Paris, 1950
Gordon Parks, Foule rue Mouffetard, 1950
Gordon Parks, American teens in Paris, 1952
Also:
Instant Views [o.] Backstage at the Latin Quarter | Photos by Gordon Parks, New York (1958)
