Gordon Parks
Ellen Crying, Harlem, New York

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Artist Gordon Parks (American, 1912–2006)American, 1912–2006

CultureAmerican

Titles

Ellen Crying, Harlem, New York

Date1967

Place depictedNew York, New York, United States

MediumGelatin silver print

DimensionsImage: 10 1/4 × 13 3/8 in. (26 × 34 cm)
Sheet: 10 1/4 × 13 3/8 in. (26 × 34 cm)

Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by James Edward Maloney and Beverly Ann Young

Object number98.545

Not on view

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Department

Photography

Special Collections

Photographs by African American Artists

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionSome photographs have the power to change the course of their subjects’ lives. Amidst the national race riots in 1967, Gordon Parks spent a month living with the Fontenelle family in Harlem to produce an extensive photo essay for which he also wrote the text, rare within the Life hierarchy. The father was unemployed; they had no money, no food, and no winter clothes for their school-age children. In an instant, the daughter, Ellen, whose teary face was featured on Life’s cover, became the face of black urban poverty. Prefiguring crowdsourced funding platforms like Kickstarter, the reader response to the essay generated enough money to buy the Fontenelles a small house on Long Island. Three months later, the house burned down, tragically killing the father and one of the sons. Of the eight children featured in the story, only one lived to more than 30 years of age. Parks remained close to the family and subsequently wrote about the complexity of altering people’s lives in this way, describing the ambivalent good that comes with the public rush to help once such a story has been published.
Provenance[Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York]; purchased by MFAH, 1998.
Exhibition History"A Love Affair with Pictures: 25 Years of Collecting Photographs at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston," MFAH, Lower Jones and Masterson Galleries, October 14 - December 30, 2001.

"From the Printed Page: Photographs from the Manfred Heiting Collection," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, January 23-June 5, 2006.

“Made for Magazines: Iconic 20th-Century Photographs,” The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, February 9–May 4, 2014.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

Inscription: The photograph is inscribed in pencil, verso, left edge: "Crying child / 1968 ". The photograph is inscribed in pencil, verso, bottom edge: "PF24558". The photograph is inscribed in red, verso, top edge: "MARTIN / K-1", top left " TL[circled] " The photograph is stamped in red, verso, lower right: "Photo by / Gordon Parks".

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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