Untitled (Outside the Liberty Theater)

Gordon Parks—best known as a photojournalist , but also active as a filmmaker, poet, novelist, and musician—once described his camera as a "weapon against poverty and racism."  Parks began a decades long career at Life magazine in 1948, where he gained a reputation for his sensitive portrayals of the human condition. This is one of five Parks photographs owned by the MFA. It depicts a black couple outside a segregated cinema ironically called the Liberty Theater.