Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Gordon Parks: Pastor E.F. Ledbetter and the Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church, 1953

Gordon Parks: Pastor E.F. Ledbetter and the Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church, 1953

Parks, Gordon
Kunhardt Jr, Peter W.
Harvey, Melanee C.

Hardcover

General PhotographyPhotographers

Publisher Price: $65.00

ISBN10: 396999473X
ISBN13: 9783969994733
Publisher: Steidl
Published: Dec 2 2025
Pages: 224
Weight: 3.40
Height: 1.00 Width: 10.00 Depth: 11.50
Language: English

The first feature article that Parks both wrote and photographed is reassembled through previously unseen images, contact sheets, ephemeral material and Parks' original manuscript

Published with The Gordon Parks Foundation and Howard University.

In 1953, Gordon Parks returned to Chicago on an assignment for Life magazine to photograph the Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church and the Reverend Ernest F. Ledbetter Sr. for a series on American religious life. This would be the first assignment for which he was both writer as well as photographer. Parks approached the Near West Side church with a decisive eye toward composing compelling images that conveyed simultaneously the universal humanity and local specificity of the religious community. Life never published his photographs or essay, yet as this book demonstrates, Parks' visual and textual representation of Black religious life powerfully documents the dynamism of a community shaped by the Great Migration and Chicago's industrial landscape. This publication features more than 65 previously unpublished photographs and contact sheets, complemented by Parks' unseen manuscript and ephemeral material from the private collection of the Ledbetter family. A range of scholarly essays provides further insight and contextual analysis in art history, cultural geography, Black religious studies and creative writing.

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