John Legend arriving at the gala
By Isseu Diouf Campbell
The Gordon Parks Foundation celebrated 100 years of Gordon Parks at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on June 5th, 2012.
The centennial gala, hosted by Anderson Cooper of CNN, honored three individuals who embody Parks’ artistic passion and vision – singer Alicia Keys, photographer Annie Leibovitz and Richard Plepler, co-president of HBO.
The foundation’s mission is to preserve the work of Gordon Parks, a self-taught photographer, composer and author, and make his creations available to the public through exhibitions, books, and electronic media. Parks became the first African Americans to write and direct a Hollywood feature film – “The Learning Tree,” based on his bestselling novel.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., director o fthe W.E.B. Du Bois Research Center at Harvard University, considers Parks “the most important black photographer in the history of photojournalism. Long after the events that he photographed have been forgotten, his images will remain with us, testaments to the genius of his art, transcending time, place and subject matter.”
Photos of the event
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