Call
646 620 9332
Contact
susy@pittsburghmercantile.com
Store info

Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm

Directions

5045 Fifth Avenue

pittsburgh, pa 15231

5045 Fifth Avenue

pittsburgh, pa 15231

Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm

"Pittsburgh Grease Plant" by Gordon Parks

$65.00

Gordon Parks was born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, Kansas, in 1912. He worked as a brothel pianist and railcar porter, among other jobs, before buying a camera at a pawnshop, training himself to become a photographer. By 1944, Parks had established himself as a photographer who freely navigated the fields of press and commercial photography with an unparalleled humanist perspective. 

In 1944, The Standard Oil Company commissioned Parks to travel to Pittsburgh to document the Penola, Inc. Grease Plant. Employing his signature style, Parks spent two years chronicling the plant’s industry―critical to Pittsburgh’s history and character―by photographing its workers. The resulting photographs, dramatically staged and lit and striking in their composition, showed the range of activities engaged in by Black and white workers, divided as they were by roles, race and class. The images were used as marketing materials and made available to local and national newspapers, as well as corporate magazines and newsletters. However, they served as much more than documentation of industry, enduring as an exploration of labor and its social and economic ramifications in World War II America by one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.


Featuring more than 100 photographs, this is the first book to focus exclusively on Parks’ photographs for the Standard Oil Company, illuminating an important chapter in his career prior to his landmark career as a staff photographer for 
Life.  In addition to his tenures photographing for the FSA (1941–45) and Life magazine (1948–72), Parks evolved into a modern-day Renaissance man, finding success as a film director, writer and composer.

Hardcover, 221 pages

"Pittsburgh Grease Plant" by Gordon Parks

Added to cart "Pittsburgh Grease Plant" by Gordon Parks
View product details "Pittsburgh Grease Plant" by Gordon Parks