Foam is presenting the first major retrospective of Gordon Parks' work in The Netherlands. He was a pioneer in many ways; back in the day it was very unusual for African American photographers to be commissioned by renowned magazines like Vogue and Life, and through his work Parks was able to bring important issues like segregation, marginalisation, injustice and poverty to the attention of a broad audience.

Apart from an important photographer, Gordon Parks was also the first African American director in Hollywood to write and direct a feature film. This movie, The Learning Tree, was followed by Shaft in which he introduced the first black super hero.

The exhibition in Foam is part of a European tour initiated by museum for photography and visual media C/O Berlin. It will contain a large part of Parks' photographic oeuvre, with a focus on fashion, crime, segregation, portraits, workers and kids. Extracts from his first two films will be shown in the exhibition alongside the photographs and contact sheets.