AMERICAN GOTHIC. GORDON PARKS AND ELLA WATSON

American Gothic, Gordon Parks 1942 portrait of government worker Ella Watson, is among the most celebrated photographs of the twentieth century. Created as part of an extensive collaboration between the photographer and his subject, it is at once a record of one womans position within the racial, professional and economic hierarchies that stratified the nations capital and Parks visual reckoning with the realities of living in racially segregated Washington, D.C.