The New Tide: Early Work 1940-1950

The New Tide: Early Work 1940-1950 collects photographs and magazine publications from the first decade of Gordon Parks's career, drawing on new research and pictures that had been forgotten.

Steidl calls the 1940s the first and most formative decade of a 65-year career. The book follows Parks from his first published photographs in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and his ties to the Chicago Black Renaissance, through his mentorship with Roy Stryker, to his work for the picture magazines, among them Ebony and Life. It traces his change from an accomplished self-taught photographer into a distinctive artistic and journalistic voice. Philip Brookman edited the volume and Peter W. Kunhardt Jr. edited the series. Steidl published it in September 2018 with The Gordon Parks Foundation and the National Gallery of Art: 352 pages, 168 images, half-linen hardback, in English.

Parks (1912-2006) was born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, Kansas. He won a Julius Rosenwald Fund fellowship in 1942 and 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. Steidl also lists him as a film director, composer, memoirist, novelist and poet.