Marva Louis, Chicago

1941 · Photograph

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Pas exposée actuellement

Où est « Marva Louis, Chicago » aujourd’hui ? Collection: National Gallery of Art, Washington. Pas exposée actuellement. Vérifié 29 septembre 2026.

National Gallery of Art

Washington, États-Unis

Elle appartient à la collection, mais n’est pas présentée en ce moment.

Vérifié: il y a 11 jours
Dans cet état depuis: 19 août 2026
Source: Le musée

Sur la carte Page du musée

Notice

Numéro d’inventaire: 2016.117.103

Ce qu’elle montre

Portrait Shadow Illinois

Au catalogue

Photographies Tirage gélatino-argentique Modernisme XXe siècle American

Sources

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

Dans la vie de Gordon Parks

La vie entière

c. 1940 (aged 28)
Buys his first camera and teaches himself to shoot
Struck by magazine photographs of migrant workers, at twenty-eight he buys a Voigtländer Brillant for $12.50 at a Seattle pawnshop and teaches himself photography. The clerks who develop his first roll of film applaud his work and urge him to seek a fashion assignment at Frank Murphy’s women’s clothing store in St. Paul.
1940
Moves to Chicago on Marva Louis’s advice
His photographs for the St. Paul store catch the eye of Marva Louis, wife of heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis, who encourages Parks and his wife Sally Alvis to move to Chicago. There he opens a portrait business and specialises in photographs of society women.
1940
Daughter born: Toni Parks
1941
Exhibition of photographs of Chicago’s Black ghetto
While chronicling the South Side Black ghetto of Chicago, he sees an exhibition of these photographs win him a photography fellowship with the Farm Security Administration (FSA); other accounts link his invitation to the FSA to the Rosenwald Fellowship of 1942.
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.