Dinner Time at Mr. Hercules Brown's Home, Somerville, Maine
February 1944
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
image/sheet: 26.2 × 33.4 cm (10 5/16 × 13 1/8 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Corcoran Collection (The Gordon Parks Collection)
Accession Number
2015.19.4595
Art Historical Context
In February 1944, during World War II, renowned photographer Gordon Parks captured *Dinner Time at Mr. Brown's Home, Somerville Maine*, a poignant gelatin silver print that offers a glimpse into everyday rural American life. This 10 5/16 × 13 1/8-inch image, now part of the National Gallery of Art's Coran Collection, depicts a family meal at the Brown's modest home in rural Maine, highlighting the warmth and resilience of working-class households on the home front while soldiers fought overseas. Parks, a trailblazing African American artist and one of the first Black photographers hired by th...
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...