The Atmosphere of Crime, 1957
The Atmosphere of Crime, 1957 presents Gordon Parks's color photographs for a Life magazine series on crime in America, including pictures that had not been published before.
Life asked Parks in 1957 to illustrate a recurring series of articles on crime in the United States. He was already a staff photographer, the first African American to hold the position. He spent six weeks with a reporter in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, working in color, which was unusual for him. The magazine ran an eight-page photo-essay titled "The Atmosphere of Crime." Steidl says Parks turned away from the usual images of delinquency, drug use and corruption. He looked instead at the social and economic conditions behind crime, at police work, and at incarceration. Sarah Hermanson Meister edited the volume, with texts by Nicole Fleetwood and Bryan Stevenson. Steidl published it in April 2020 with The Gordon Parks Foundation and The Museum of Modern Art.
Parks (1912-2006) was born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, Kansas. He won a Julius Rosenwald Fund fellowship in 1942. He went on to work for the Farm Security Administration and for magazines including Ebony, Vogue and Life, where he was a staff photographer for more than two decades.
