Norman Fontenelle
1967
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
image: 23.5 × 33.7 cm (9 1/4 × 13 1/4 in.) sheet: 25.6 × 35.2 cm (10 1/16 × 13 7/8 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Corcoran Collection (The Gordon Parks Collection)
Accession Number
2015.19.4677
Art Historical Context
In 1967, renowned African American photographer Gordon Parks captured *Norman Fontenelle*, a poignant gelatin silver print portrait now housed in the National Gallery of Art's Corcoran Collection. Parks, a trailblazing artist who documented Black life in America for *Life* magazine, turned his lens on urban youth during a turbulent era. This image likely features Norman Fontenelle, a figure from Harlem's streets, embodying Parks' commitment to humanizing marginalized communities amid the Civil Rights Movement and rising social unrest. The photograph's historical significance lies in its refle...
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...