WICHITA, KS.- Currently on view at the Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University, Visual Justice: The Gordon Parks Photography Collection at WSU, is an exhibition of the 125 Gordon Parks photographs acquired by the museum in 2014. Many of Parks’ best known photo-essays for Life are well represented in this exhibition, including Harlem Gang Leader, 1948, and Freedom’s Fearful Foe: Poverty, 1961. The Ulrich presentation is completed with a selection of Parks’ experimental color images produced in the last years of his life. This is the first time photographs from the 2014 acquisition have been exhibited by the Ulrich.

Speaking about Visual Justice, John Edwin Mason said “it is the most comprehensive exhibition of Parks’ work in the last 20 years—a real overview of his career." Mason is professor of African history and the history of photography at the University of Virginia. An expert on all things Gordon Parks, Mason served as a consultant for this exhibition.

Wichita State has long embraced a special relationship with Kansas born photographer Gordon Parks. The university has hosted a series of important exhibitions of his work over the past forty years, culminating in the 2008 acquisition of the Gordon Parks Papers for the WSU Libraries Special Collections. Until recently, the Ulrich Museum housed limited examples of the artist’s photographs. The 2014 acquisition is a gift/purchase of 125 photographs made possible by museum donors and The Gordon Parks Foundation. The 2014 acquisition brings the Ulrich Museum’s holdings of photographs created by Gordon Parks to a total of 177—making this collection one of the largest Parks’ collections in existence.

"In total, Visual Justice speaks to Parks’ genius as both an artist and humanitarian,” said Bob Workman, director, Ulrich Museum of Art. "This celebration of the Ulrich’s most recent Gordon Parks acquisitions surveys the life work of one of this country’s most important photographers. He captured the injustices of the Civil Rights Movement alongside the stark realities of world strife through images taken throughout the second half of the 20th century.”

Visual Justice: The Gordon Parks Photography Collection at WSU is on view through April 10, 2016.