Today is National Camera Day in the United States, the perfect chance to revisit our archive feature on the late, great American image-maker Gordon Parks, who so powerfully used his camera as a self-described “weapon” against racism and social injustice. Throughout his life, Parks worked hard to “confront the challenges facing the [American] nation by illuminating the inner lives of his subjects,” explained Alison Jacques gallery. He did so by adopting a deeply humanistic approach that resonates throughout his images, once declaring that “it is the heart, not the eye, that should determine the content of the photograph”.
