The Gordon Parks Foundation has announced its 2024 fellowship recipients: conceptual artist and Howard University Professor Larry W. Cook, photographer and social justice artist Tonika Lewis Johnson, and award-winning author D. Watkins, who is the Genevieve Young Fellow in Writing. Since 2017, the fellowship program has championed individuals who share the foundation's commitment to advancing Parks's vision for social change through the arts and humanities.
PLEASANTVILLE, N.Y., Jan. 17, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- The Gordon Parks Foundation has announced its 2024 fellowship recipients: conceptual artist and Howard University Professor Larry W. Cook, photographer and social justice artist Tonika Lewis Johnson, and award-winning author D. Watkins, who is the Genevieve Young Fellow in Writing. Since 2017, the fellowship program has championed individuals who share the Foundation's commitment to advancing Parks's vision for social change through the arts and humanities. Each recipient receives $25,000 to support new or ongoing projects that explore themes of representation and social justice. Fellows participate in a wide range of Foundation initiatives and programs throughout the year, culminating in a solo exhibition at the Gordon Parks Foundation.
"Through their art and writing, our 2024 Fellows have brought attention to systemic racism and community activism," said Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr., Executive Director of The Gordon Parks Foundation. "We are proud to support Larry, Tonika, and D. as they continue to enact change through their art in much the same way Gordon Parks did throughout his lifetime."
Larry W. Cook is an interdisciplinary artist and archivist working across photography, video, and mixed media, as well as an Associate Professor of Photography at Howard University. His previous work as a club photographer throughout the Washington D.C. area – setting up makeshift photo booths that featured backdrops of surrealist landscapes and luxury goods – shaped his interest in examining landscape, space, liberty, incarceration, and belonging through art. Cook's practice explores how the pose and hand-painted backdrops circulate within both vernacular club and prison photographs, often re-imagining them through collage, digital manipulation, and staged photography. His work celebrates the legacy of the pose as a form of individual agency and pays homage to the rich tradition of Black cultural spaces. "Gordon Parks's photographs, films, and writing are a major influence on my work and his use of art to shape social change inspires me to do the same," said Cook. "I plan to use this fellowship for a project that will provoke thought, change perceptions, and stimulate conversations about the criminal justice system and the need for support and opportunity for returning citizens."
Tonika Lewis Johnson is a photographer, social justice artist, and lifelong resident of the Englewood neighborhood in Chicago's South Side. Her art often explores urban segregation and preserving Chicago's Black cultural memory, revealing injustices and inequities – past and present – as evidenced in our built environment, systems, and social networks. Through ongoing projects like her acclaimed Folded Map (2018-present) and unBlocked Englewood (2023-ongoing), she encourages us to reevaluate and create positive change of inequities in real estate and land use practices, including historic preservation. "This fellowship fills me with joy and humility," said Lewis Johnson. "Gordon Parks's life and career has been my guiding light since I was 13, confirming my love for using photography to defend my neighborhood's true essence against local media bullying. With this fellowship, I can continue on a journey that echoes Parks's legacy – shedding light on systemic issues while also demonstrating the transformative power of art in fostering healing and change."
D. Watkins is a Baltimore-based author and Editor-at-large for Salon. His writing often explores the strangled emotions of urban youth and works to dispel the myth that violence is currency. Watkins is The New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of The Beast Side (2015), The Cook Up (2015), Where Tomorrows Aren't Promised (2021), Black Boy Smile (2022), and other books. He is also a contributing author to the forthcoming publication, Devin Allen: Baltimore, which is the 2023 recipient of The Gordon Parks Foundation/Steidl Book Prize. "My professional journey in the arts has been far from traditional and would not be possible without the work of Gordon Parks. The combination of his impact and success made me feel like I mattered," Watkins said. "The Genevieve Young Fellow in Writing is a dream come true and a full circle moment for me, as I now have an opportunity to serve the most vulnerable and hopefully inspire nontraditional creators with the kind of energy that Parks gifted me."
The Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship programs were established to grant the same vital support that Parks received early in his career to contemporary artists and writers who are continuing his legacy of using art to enact social change. In 1942, Parks was awarded the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship, a grant that allowed him to move to Washington D.C. and apprentice under Roy Stryker at the Farm Security Administration (FSA). This opportunity set the course for Parks's 60-year career documenting American life through powerful photographs and iconic films, becoming one of the most important photographers of the twentieth century.
The Gordon Parks Foundation has awarded 14 fellowships in art since 2017. Previous fellows include Jammie Holmes and José Parlá (2023), Bisa Butler and Andre D. Wagner (2022), Nina Chanel Abney and Tyler Mitchell (2020), Guadalupe Rosales and Hank Willis Thomas (2019), Derrick Adams and Deana Lawson (2018), and Devin Allen and Harriet Dedman (2017). The Genevieve Young Fellowship was established in 2022 in honor of the legendary book editor, who was also Gordon Parks's creative partner and estate executor. Young was also instrumental in the creation and development of the Gordon Parks Foundation beginning in 2006, and served on the Foundation's board from 2006–20. Writing in particular was central to Parks's work, a means of expression that broadened the reach and impact of his perspective. Previous recipients include Melanee C. Harvey (2023) and Nicole R. Fleetwood (2022).
Larry W. Cook's Gordon Parks Foundation Art Fellowship is conceived in partnership with Howard University, celebrating the acquisition in 2022 of over 250 photographs by Gordon Parks that represent the arc of his career over five decades. The Fellowship supports the production of a project by a Howard University professor and acts as the foundation for a series of programs that celebrate this historic acquisition.
The 2024 Gordon Parks Foundation Fellows will be celebrated at the annual Gordon Parks Foundation Awards Dinner on May 21, 2024 in New York City, which will also honor Alicia Keys, Kasseem Dean (aka Swizz Beatz), Mickalene Thomas, Colin Kaepernick, and Myrlie Evers-Williams. The gala will also feature a special tribute to Richard Roundtree and Shaft. More information can be found at: https://www.gordonparksfoundation.org/support/gala
DOWNLOAD PHOTOS AND BIOS FOR THE 2024 GORDON PARKS FOUNDATION FELLOWS HERE
ABOUT THE GORDON PARKS FOUNDATION
The Gordon Parks Foundation supports and produces artistic and educational initiatives that advance the legacy and vision of Gordon Parks—recognized as the most significant American photographer of the 20th century, as well as a writer, musician, and filmmaker, who used the arts to further "the common search for a better life and a better world." Through exhibitions, publications, and public programs organized in collaboration with national and international institutions as well as its exhibition space in Pleasantville, New York, the Foundation provides access to, and supports understanding of, the work and contributions of Gordon Parks for artists, scholars, students, and the public. Drawing inspiration from the pivotal role of a fellowship Parks received early in his career, the Foundation's educational and grant-making initiatives are core to its mission and year-round activities. Through fellowships, prizes, and scholarships, the Foundation provides vital support to artists, writers, and students—current and future generations of creatives whose work continues his legacy.
ABOUT GORDON PARKS
In a career that spanned more than 50 years, photographer, filmmaker, musician, and author Gordon Parks created a groundbreaking body of work that made him one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. Beginning in the 1940s, he documented American life and culture with a focus on social justice, race relations, the civil rights movement, and the Black American experience. Born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, Kansas, Parks was drawn to photography as a young man. Despite his lack of professional training, he won a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1942; this led to a position with the photography section of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in Washington, D.C., and later, the Office of War Information (OWI). By the mid-1940s, he was working as a freelance photographer for publications such as Vogue, Glamour, and Ebony. Parks was hired in 1948 as a staff photographer for Life magazine, where he spent more than two decades creating some of his most notable work. In 1969, he became the first Black American to write and direct a major feature film, The Learning Tree, based on his semi-autobiographical novel. His next directorial endeavor, Shaft (1971), helped define a genre known as Blaxploitation films. Parks continued photographing, publishing, and composing until his death in 2006.
Media Contact
Jill Mango, Gordon Parks Foundation, 1 9142608617, [email protected], https://www.gordonparksfoundation.org
SOURCE Gordon Parks Foundation
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