Rosie Fonetenelle Cleans the Bathtub, Harlem, New York, 1967 

The Fontenelles at the Poverty Board, Harlem, New York, 1967

Ellen Crying, Harlem, New York, 1967

The Only Picture Hanging in the Fontenelle Home, Harlem, New York, 1967

Press Release

The Gordon Parks Foundation announces the opening of a new exhibition of photographs. A Harlem Family 1967, last displayed in 2012 at the Studio Museum in Harlem, will be the Foundation's second show to open in its new exhibition space at 48 Wheeler Avenue in Pleasantville, New York.

The photographs on display were made by Gordon Parks in 1967 while on assignment for Life magazine. Depicted in these photographs are the daily occurrences of one Harlem family -- the Fontenelles -- living with the harsh trials of poverty. The pictures, along with an essay authored by Parks, was published in a photo essay titled “A Harlem Family,” in a special section of the March 8, 1968 issue of Life on race and poverty entitled "The Cycle of Despair: The Negro and the City." A searing portrait of poverty in the United States, the Fontenelle photographs provide an intimate view of a neighborhood - and a nation - at a turbulent moment in time.

The exhibition, which consists of photographs and a screening of Parks’ documentary film Diary of a Harlem Family, will be on view September 12 through the fall. In addition, The Gordon Parks Foundation has partnered with Google Cultural Institute to present an online exhibition of A Harlem Family 1967. The book Gordon Parks: A Harlem Family 1967 (2012) is available online through the Foundation's website, www.gordonparksfoundation.org, as well as at exhibition space.

A Harlem Family is an iteration of the exhibition and catalogue Gordon Parks: A Harlem Family, 1967 curated and written by Thelma Golden and organized by the Studio Museum of Harlem, in collaboration with the Gordon Parks Foundation.