The largest ever Parks exhibit held in Latin America opens on October 4, 2025. The selection rounds up about 200 photographs, most taken between the 1940s and the 1970s, in addition to movies, magazines, and books. Included are portraits of central figures in the American Black movement, such as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Muhammad Ali, as well as photography series on topics such as childhood and everyday life.
A central name in world photography history, Gordon Parks (1912-2006) is the author of a vast body of work, documenting the everyday lives of Black citizens in segregated states in the USA, the Black movement’s organized fight for civil rights, and the cultural and religious life of African American populations, among other topics. His work, trajectory, and legacy are honored in the retrospective Gordon Parks: America Is Me, opening on October 4 (Saturday) at IMS Paulista (Av. Paulista, 2424).
Curated by Janaina Damaceno, with Iliriana Fontoura Rodrigues as assistant curator and Maria Luiza Meneses as curatorial assistant, the exhibit is the first Parks retrospective in Brazil and the largest in Latin America. On opening day (October 4), at 11am, the curatorial team will talk to the public at the IMS cine-theater. The Instituto Moreira Salles is producing the exhibition in partnership with The Gordon Parks Foundation, who are holders of the photographer’s collection and were the main source of material for the conception of the project.
Taking up two of the cultural center’s stories, the exhibition rounds up about 200 photographs, taken mainly between the 1940s and the 1970s, in addition to films, magazines, witness accounts, and other publications, highlighting Parks’s multifaceted character as a musician, filmmaker, and poet as well. Among the works on display are portraits of central names in the Black movement in America, such as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Muhammad Ali, and renowned photo series such as Back to Fort Scott (1950), and Segregation in the South (1956).
The title of the exhibition—America Is Me—was taken from a piece written by Parks for Life magazine in 1968 about a crucial issue for the Black movement in the USA: the fact that the American democracy was consolidated under a racial segregation regime, excluding the Black population. The piece was published in tandem with a photography series portraying the precarious living conditions of the Fontenelle Family, a Black family in Harlem.
In his own words, but also resonating with those of the Fontenelle Family, the photographer states: “There is something about both of us that goes deeper than blood or black and white. It is our common search for a better life, a better world. I march now over the same ground you once marched. I fight for the same things you still fight for. My children’s needs are the same as your children’s. I too am America. America is me. It gave me the only life I know — so I must share in its survival. Look at me. Listen to me. Try to understand my struggle against your racism. There is yet a chance for us to live in peace beneath these restless skies.”
Open until March 1, 2026, the exhibition comes with a wide-ranging program of activities, in addition to a catalog of its images and texts. When visiting the retrospective, the public will be able to delve into Parks’s work and trajectory, marked by political commitment and a sense of kinship with the subjects, as pointed out by the curation team: “The exhibition is a reunion with American Black history, but also with one of the most important photographers in the 20th century, the one who best documented how dignity, self care, and beauty became forms of resistance against a system that desired the annihilation of Black persons. In his work, he deals with subalternity, with the American racist structures, while also building up narratives of kinship, self esteem, community, intimacy, and trust among Black persons. He shows us our singularities and the multiplicity of our experiences as Black individuals in the world.”
