Samuel Barber, New York after 1955

This is Gordon Parks’ gelatin silver print of Samuel Barber, maybe from New York, we don’t know exactly when. It feels so staged, doesn’t it? Like theater. I mean, there’s Barber himself looking all serious, and in the background, a storm rages, and then there’s this weird, wilting plant, kind of like a prop. It makes me wonder what Parks was thinking, setting all this up. Was he trying to say something about Barber’s music, maybe hinting at the drama and the turmoil beneath the surface? The black and white adds to that feeling, too, like we’re watching a scene from an old movie. I think Parks is playing with us a little bit, poking at the idea of how we see artists, turning them into characters in their own story. It reminds me of other portrait photographers, like Irving Penn or Richard Avedon, who also liked to control every little detail. It's all part of this long conversation that artists have across time, always riffing off each other, trying to find new ways to mess with our heads.