1990 Infinity Award: Lifetime Achievement

Gordon Parks became a photographer in 1937 after seeing examples of Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographs reproduced in a magazine. He worked as a fashion photographer in Minneapolis and Chicago, before going to Washington, D.C. and finding work with Roy Stryker at the FSA.

In 1944, he began working for Vogue and four years later took a staff position with Life magazine, where he worked as both a fashion photographer and a photojournalist. He remained at Life until 1970, producing many of his most important photo essays, such as those on Harlem gangs, segregation in the South, his own experiences with racism; on Flavio da Silva, a poor child living in Brazil; and on Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Black Panthers. Parks's many books include Camera Portraits, A Choice of Weapons, Born Black, Moments Without Proper Names, and Half Past Autumn: A Retrospective.