Stanford University: Cantor Arts Center presents the photographic work of Gordon Parks

Langston Hughes, Malcolm X and Sister Ethel Muhammad Sharrieff are some of the famous faces featured in the third and final exhibition in a series at the Cantor Arts Center celebrating The Capital Group Foundation Photography Collection at Stanford University, a collection of more than 1,000 20th-century photographs by American artists.

A Loaded Camera: Gordon Parks, on view in the Ruth Levison Halperin Gallery through July 3, celebrates the artistry and impact of Parks’ documentary photography.

Parks’ work as a photographer, writer, composer and filmmaker repeatedly broke barriers set against African Americans. For the self-taught Parks, born to a family of 15 children in a segregated Kansas town, taking a photograph was never a neutral act. He famously wrote that early on, he understood his camera to be a “weapon against all the things I dislike about America – poverty, racism, discrimination.”