Collected Works. Study Edition, Volume 1: 1942–1948

The first volume of the most extensive publication devoted to Gordon Parks (1912–2006), covering the years in which he taught himself photography and reached the staff of Life.

The volume runs from 1942, when Parks was photographing in Chicago and Washington, to 1948, when Life hired him as its first African American staff photographer. Its years hold the work he made under Roy Stryker at the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information. That includes the 1942 portrait of the government charwoman Ella Watson, standing with a mop and broom before an American flag. The fashion and portrait assignments he was taking at the same time run alongside it.

Parks went on to build the extended photo essay into a form for reporting on crime, poverty and segregation. He worked later as a composer, author and filmmaker (The Learning Tree, Shaft). Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr. and Paul Roth edited the Study Edition, a smaller-format reissue of the 2012 Collected Works. It runs to 1,084 pages across five clothbound volumes, arranged chronologically. The printed cardboard box they ship in is part of the design, not packaging. Texts across the set are by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Deborah Willis, Maurice Berger, Barbara Baker Burrows, Paul Roth and Parks himself. The library holds Volumes 1 to 3.