This book celebrates photographer, filmmaker, composer, and author Gordon Parks, drawing on photographs and archival material held at Wichita State University. Parks's legacy involves a delicate confluence of artistic traditions and the vernacular creative forces in modern American experience. John Wright explores the forms of vision Parks employed across artistic media to grapple with the culture of contradictions he observed in 20th-century America. John S. Wrightis professor of African American studies and English and principal scholar for the Archie Givens Sr. Collection of African American Literature and Life at the University of Minnesota. He is a leading scholar on the Harlem Renaissance and author Ralph Ellison.