CHARLESTON, SC.- Joshua Parks is a southern-raised Black image-maker and cultural worker with Gullah Geechee and Gulf Coast Creole heritage. His work analyzes Afro-descendant communities in the Atlantic world, their relationship to land and water as the basis of subsistence, autonomy, survival, and collective memory, and how these elements influence social and cultural development. The Halsey Institute is proud to present Parks’s first solo museum exhibition.

In his practice, Parks puts intentional relationships and storytelling first, using image as his medium for communication. Born in We: African Descendants of the Atlantic World explores the interconnectedness among communities of African descendants in the Lowcountry, the Caribbean, and West Africa through photography, film, and sounds of the Atlantic World. Bridging past and present, he presents a continuum of culture across time and space underscoring the resilience and ongoing evolution of African and Afro-descendant identities all while confronting and transcending the enduring legacies of slavery and colonialism. This exhibition is an invitation to see–not only with the eyes but with the spirit, as Parks shares with viewers the result of his early fascination with looking through hundreds of family photographs, seeing rather than reading about the past, the present, and undoubtedly the future of African people worldwide.

Joshua Parks is an imagemaker and cultural worker from Jacksonville, Florida. His roots stretch back over seven generations in the Lowcountry of South Carolina and Florida’s Gulf Coast. His work analyzes urban and rural Afro-descendant communities in the Black Belt South and the Atlantic world; their relationship to land and water as the basis of subsistence, autonomy, survival, and collective memory; and how these elements influence social and cultural development.

Parks was the principal photographer for the Greenbook of South Carolina (2022), and has photos exhibited at the International African American Museum, the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, and the Seashore Farmers’ Lodge Museum and Cultural Center. He has worked as an in-house producer for the International African American Museum, contributing to their core digital exhibitions (short educational documentaries) such as Carolina Gold, Memories of the Enslaved, Gullah Geechee Overview Film, Moving Star Hall, the Parks/Wilder Family History, and more. He currently owns and operates Cimarron Productions, a full scale film, photography, and digital media company, in addition to co-founding the Lowcountry Arts Movement, a non-profit dedicated to building an ecosystem of Black artists, cultural workers, and organizers whose goal is to create and promote art and programming that raises the collective consciousness of the Lowcountry community and beyond. Parks received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with a minor in History from Howard University, and is pursuing a Masters degree in Public History at the College of Charleston.