Photographer Gordon Parks’ religious images displayed in DC exhibition

WASHINGTON (RNS) — A new exhibition of the work of Gordon Parks, a photographer renowned for documenting African American life, turns its focus on Parks’ exploration of Black religion and spirituality.

“Although Gordon Parks’s personal religious beliefs vacillated across his lifetime, he applied a working knowledge of Black religious culture with a commitment to humanism as an approach to documentary photography and photojournalism,” reads the introductory wall text for “Temples of Hope, Rituals of Survival: Gordon Parks and Black Religious Life” at Howard University in Washington.