Gordon Parks
Fort Scott, Kansas1950
gelatin silver print
13 1/2 x 9 1/2 in.
Smithsonian American Art Museum, purchase through the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation
The people of Fort Scott, Kansas, have stayed with Gordon Parks all his life. He grew up in this prairie town, the youngest child in a family of fifteen, amid poverty and racism. Parks's own determination and achievement suggest that this is not an image of an individual defeated, but one contemplating a way out.
