The exhibition brings together rare prints spanning 1934 through 1965, highlighting Parks’s ability to portray a woman’s interior world. Much of the fashion photography being shot at the time was done in studios, resulting in rigid and highly choreographed images, but Parks was one of the first photographers who preferred to shoot his models in real settings, their dramatic yet fluid gestures animating the clothes they wore. He didn’t necessarily focus on showcasing the clothes, but rather on giving a sense of the stories women could live out in them. Often, he photographed models through one or multiple apertures—an open window or a keyhole, for example—imbuing the images with a sense of voyeurism.This compositional device amplifies the sense of fantasy latent in these images; as we furtively glimpse these frozen moments, we wonder about the meaning of style, and how it might rewrite our own narratives.
—Alexandra Alexa