Alberto Giacometti, Paris
1951
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
image/sheet: 33.8 × 27.2 cm (13 5/16 × 10 11/16 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Corcoran Collection (The Gordon Parks Collection)
Accession Number
2016.117.168
Art Historical Context
In 1951, renowned photographer Gordon Parks captured *Alberto Giacometti, Paris*, a striking gelatin silver print now housed in the National Gallery of Art'scoran Collection. This black-and-white portrait features the Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti a towering figure in 20th-century art known for his spindly, existential bronze figures that evoke post-World War II alienation and human fragility. Parks, an African American pioneer in photojournalism and a contributor to *Life* magazine, was in Paris during this vibrant postwar era, documenting the city's intellectual and artistic elite. The ...
About the Artist
Gordon Parks
Gordon Parks (1912–2006), born the youngest of fifteen children to a Kansas tenant farmer and his wife in segregated Fort Scott, overcame a childhood marked by poverty, racism, and tragedy—including his mother's death at age fourteen—to become one of America's most influential chroniclers of Black life. Entirely self-taught after purchasing his first camera in 1937, inspired by Farm Security Admin...