Portrait of a Young Girl, Harlem
August 1943
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
image: 31.6 × 24.1 cm (12 7/16 × 9 1/2 in.) sheet: 35.2 × 27.6 cm (13 7/8 × 10 7/8 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Corcoran Collection (The Gordon Parks Collection)
Accession Number
2016.117.125
Art Historical Context
In the summer of 1943, during the height of World War II, acclaimed photographer Gordon Parks created *Portrait of a Young Girl Harlem*, a gelatin silver print that captures an intimate moment of everyday life. This medium, a staple of mid-20th-century photography excels in producing deep blacks, luminous whites, and nuanced grays, lending the image its timeless clarity and emotional depth. Measuring 31.6 × 24.1 cm, the print draws viewers into the subject's world with remarkable immediacy. Parks, one of the first prominent African American photographers to document urban Black communities, t...
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...