Harvesting Grain

1944 · Photograph

Can I see it?

Not on view at present

Where is “Harvesting Grain” now? Collection: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Not on view at present. Checked September 29, 2026.

National Gallery of Art

Washington, D.C., United States

It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.

Checked: 11 days ago
In this state since: Aug 19, 2026
Source: The museum

On the map Museum page

Details

Accession number: 2025.100.31

What it shows

Labor Agriculture Man Machine

In the catalog

Photographs Gelatin silver print Modernism 20th century American

Sources

National Gallery of Art
Image: National Gallery of Art — © the artist or rights holder

In the life of Gordon Parks

The whole life

1942
Receives the Rosenwald Fellowship
The Julius Rosenwald Fellowship, $200 a month with the choice of employer, rewards his work in Chicago, especially his capturing of the myriad experiences of African Americans across the city. It contributes to his being asked to join the FSA, which under Roy Stryker was chronicling the nation’s social conditions.
c. 1942
Stryker calls the picture an indictment of America
Seeing the photograph, Stryker says it is an indictment of America that could get all of his photographers fired, and urges Parks to keep working with Watson, which leads to a series of pictures of her daily life. Parks later says his first image was overdone and not subtle.
4 March 1944
Son born: David Parks
from the mid-1940s
Becomes a fashion photographer for Vogue
After leaving the Office of War Information he moves to Harlem and works as a freelance fashion photographer for Vogue; editor Alexander Liberman, despite the racist attitudes of the day, hires him to shoot a collection of evening gowns. He develops a distinctive style of photographing his models in motion rather than in static poses, and his fashion work appears in Vogue from the mid-1940s to the late 1970s.
mid-1940s
Works on the Standard Oil project in New Jersey
After leaving the Office of War Information — where he photographed the all-black 332d Fighter Group, the Tuskegee Airmen, and resigned when he could not follow them to the overseas war theatre — he follows Stryker to the Standard Oil Photography Project in New Jersey, whose photographers shoot small towns and industrial centers. His most striking pictures of these years include “Dinner Time at Mr. Hercules Brown’s Home, Somerville, Maine” (1944), “Car Loaded with Furniture on Highway” (1945), “Self Portrait” (1945) and “Ferry Commuters, Staten Island, N.Y.” (1946).