‘Temples of Hope, Rituals of Survival: Gordon Parks and Black Religious Life’ now on view at Howard U.

Sign up for our FREE acclaimed newsletters!

The news mainstream media just doesn’t cover. Racial justice journalism since 1909.

Sign up

Gordon Parks is one of those photographers who really does not need much of an introduction. His work documenting Black life throughout the United States is legendary, making him one of the most famous Black photographers in history, if not in photography in general. Combine that with the books he wrote, the movies he directed, and the music he composed, and he becomes a true Renaissance man.

I don’t remember exactly when I was first introduced to Parks’ work. His photographs have always just seemed to be in the back of my mind as I work on my own photo stories, and something I have always judged my own work against. His books and photographs are one of those touchstones that I return to again and again.

Even with Parks’ work and life being so well documented, there are still aspects of it that have not yet been fully explored. A new exhibition at Howard University, Temples of Hope, Rituals of Survival: Gordon Parks and Black Religious Life, looks to expand our insights into Parks and his works, investigating the social structures and sites of religious practice in his work. The exhibition frames Parks’ underexplored religious and spiritual examinations through his photographs that captured the prominent role of religion and spirituality in 20th-century modern life.

“Gordon Parks’ photography has long been a fixture in the documentation of Black life in America,” Curator Dr. Melanee Harvey writes in the press release for the exhibition. “With contemporary developments in Black religious studies and the history of photography, we saw it necessary to engage with Parks’ insightful perspective on how Black religious and spiritual traditions impact the environment and the communities from which they emerge.”

The exhibition is made up of over 40 objects, including photos and archival documents, and works from the Gordon Parks Legacy Collection acquired by Howard University in 2022. The exhibition is accompanied by the new book Pastor E. F. Ledbetter and the Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church, 1953 published by Steidl, The Gordon Parks Foundation, and Howard University. The book looks at a story that Parks undertook in Chicago in 1953 for LIFE magazine, looking at a local Church and community. While it would have been the first assignment where Parks worked as both photographer and writer, it was never published.

The exhibition at Howard goes further, exploring Parks’ work from the 1940s through the 1980s, and going beyond just the Christian tradition. In doing so, it explores the connection between religion and its role in supporting Black life and the Black community in historical ways as well.

“In particular, the images from Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church and the images of the Nation of Islam (included in the exhibition) exemplify the tradition of the Black church or Black religious community serving the physical and social needs of the Black community,” Curator Dr. Melanee Harvey wrote to me, answering questions I emailed her. “You can see the deep impact of the Social Gospel Movement of the 1920s to the 1940s that was driven by the commitment to meeting the basic needs of food, clothing, and social services for their church members. In many ways, this was a practical response to the impact of the Great Depression. This also extends back to the long-held tradition of African American benevolent societies of the late 18th century and early 19th century that financially supported individuals and families during periods of sickness or even financing the final rituals of death.”

But the work is not static. Parks famously said that he used his camera as a weapon against poverty, racism, and social wrongs. In these complicated social, political, and religious times, the exhibition shows how Parks’ mantra can be used as a teaching tool for the current times. For the students at Howard, whose work makes up a supplemental exhibition that showcases the students’ response to Parks’ legacy, this connection is one that they are taught outright. However, it is an important lesson to teach to anyone who works against injustice and violence, whether they are students or not.

“One of the biggest takeaway points we make to students at Howard is like Gordon Parks, they too have the criticality and accessible tools of cell phones with cameras to document the world and our communities. We consistently empower our students to actively document the history unfolding before our eyes. This is important as we train students at Howard to cultivate a concern for humanity at large, and to actively engage in illuminating and confronting inequality or injustice with the tools of their academic discipline and accessible tools like cameras/camera phones,” Dr. Harvey explains. “As we increasingly teach the historical context and defining aspects of the Black Lives Matter Movement, you can’t teach that period without discussing the agency of African Americans who recorded injustice and antiblack violence. With this exhibition, we can make the connection that Gordon Parks is a precedent for the activist use of the camera that we later see in the Black Lives Matter movements of the twenty-first century.”

This is perhaps the greatest aspect of Parks’ work and is one of the major reasons that I always return to it. What he did is not confined to the time in which he lived and worked. Rather, the lesson he taught me, and many others, is that photography can be adapted and used anytime one encounters injustice in the world around. A church is not just about Christian traditions, nor is a mosque just about Islam. These institutions may be the subjects in the photographs, but there is more to it than just that. What Parks was capturing on his rolls of film was much deeper.

“Although this is an exhibition about religion and spirituality, this is also an exhibition (and the book) that focuses on community and agency,” Harvey tells me. “Black religious spaces were often havens of safety for African American communities. So with this exhibition, Gordon Parks records the institutions, individual spiritual practices, and human connections that have sustained Black Life in the United States.”

Temples of Hope, Rituals of Survival: Gordon Parks and Black Religious Life on view at Howard University’s is on view in the Dorothy Porter Room of Founders Library at Howard University through December 1, 2025.

Pastor E. F. Ledbetter and the Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church, 1953, can be purchased through Steidl’s website at steidl.de.