Willie Causey and Family, Shady Grove, Alabama after 1956

Gordon Parks made this photo, Willie Causey and Family, Shady Grove, Alabama, and I love how it feels both posed and so very candid at the same time. Parks is known for his photojournalism but he also made a lot of portraits of everyday life, and looking at this image, I wonder what it was like to be there, what it was like to try and orchestrate this image, what he was thinking when he was making it? Maybe a little nervous, or excited, hoping to capture something authentic, something real, that he could translate through his lens. The wood of the porch is so tactile, the way it frames the figures and provides a backdrop to the mundane, family life in the South. The kids in the background are a beautiful detail that seems so unrehearsed. Parks is like a painter using light and shadow, form and composition, to convey a sense of mood, a sense of place, and the quiet intimacy of human relationships. It reminds me of the work of painters like Alice Neel, who captured the spirit of New York City through portraiture, or Kerry James Marshall, whose narrative paintings are steeped in art historical references. Artists are always in dialogue.