SAINT LOUIS.- Bare Witness: Photographs by Gordon Parks is a retrospective exhibition of more than 50 photographs representing the finest works of the artist’s prolific career. These images were selected by Parks himself before his death in 2006.

Few photographers offer a record of 20th-century life as candid and provocative as Gordon Parks. Born in Fort Scott, Kansas in 1912, he began working professionally in the early 1940s. He generated one of his most enduring images, American Gothic, in 1942 as part of a documentary project in Washington, D.C. The photograph is a reference to Grant Wood’s famous painting of the same name and depicts a black cleaning woman holding a broom against a backdrop of an American flag. The image conveys the hardship of the woman’s life and the unfulfilled promise of equality for African Americans.

From 1948–1970, Parks served as staff photographer for Life magazine. With a straightforward and sympathetic eye, he investigated a range of pressing social issues including crime and urban decay in Harlem, segregation in Alabama, disease in the slums of Brazil, and the struggle for civil rights by the Black Muslims. Parks dramatized these issues through his portrayal of the day-to-day struggles of individuals and families that he grew to know well. Parks firmly believed in the power of the camera to shed light on social inequity.