“You’ve got to insert your own feeling and emotion, and you have to take chances.”

 

Parks was an American Renaissance man who mastered many media to express an uplifting and influential message of hope in the face of adversity. Parks very consciously used his art to expose the world as he saw it, and reflected its ugliness as well as its beauty.

In 1948, LIFE Magazine hired Parks to photograph both the gang wars in Harlem as well as fashions in Paris. He retained the ability to move between such different realms for the sake of his work throughout his career. His photographs convey a visual dialogue between rich and poor, rather than focusing one or the other.

Parks began to manipulate color photographs in 1958. His experiments included multiple exposures, collage and painting on pictures. By the 1960s, Parks was one of the most influential photojournalists of his time. He continued this process through his long career, and evolved a lyrical style that fluctuated between realism and abstraction.

Parks wrote four books about his life, The "Learning Tree"; "A Choice of Weapons"; "To Smile in Autumn"; and "Voices in the Mirror."