Gordon Parks: Pittsburgh Grease Plant, 1944/46

Class, race and labor in a Pittsburgh plant: a rarely seen series by Gordon Parks

By 1944, Gordon Parks had established himself as a photographer who freely navigated the fields of press and commercial photography, with an unparalleled humanist perspective. That year, Roy Stryker--the former Farm Security Administration official who was now heading the public relations department for the Standard Oil Company (New Jersey)--commissioned Parks to travel to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to document ...