Novelist, memoirist, poet, film director, choreographer, and musician, Gordon Parks (1912 2006) was renowned as a man of many talents. He is best known as a photographer, a career he took up in the 1930s. Starting with fashion and portraiture, he honed his skill and his passion for documenting social ills working for the New Deal s Farm Security Administration. During World War II he became the first black photographer employed by the War Office of Information. After the war, he became Life magazine s first black staff photographer and established an international reputation publishing images and photo-essays that helped transform and liberalize American society by informing Americans about the plight of the urban poor. Maren Stange, an authority on documentary photography, provides an introduction to his work, surveying his career and analyzing the distinguish qualities of his compelling images. This catalogue accompanies the traveling exhibition organized by the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University.