Harvey Turner, grease maker, weighing lime. When added to the grease, lime gives it body. Pittsburgh Grease Plant.
| Artist | Gordon Parks (American, 1912–2006) |
|---|---|
| Title | Harvey Turner, grease maker, weighing lime. When added to the grease, lime gives it body. Pittsburgh Grease Plant. |
| Date | September 1946 |
| Medium | Gelatin silver print |
| Dimensions | Image: 7 5/8 × 7 7/16 in. (19.4 × 18.9 cm) Sheet: 7 5/8 × 7 7/16 in. (19.4 × 18.9 cm) |
| Credit Line | Henry Holmes Smith Archive, Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University |
| Accession Number | 79.200.XX.6.21 |
| This artwork is currently off display. You may be able to see this artwork by filling out an art viewing room request. | |
A black-and-white photograph depicts a dark-skinned man in a worker's outfit, seated and operating a scale. Another person stands in front of him in the foreground, his hand scooping lime from a bag.
The African American photographer, writer, and filmmaker Gordon Parks was able to break the boundaries of racism, while at the same time commenting on its place in American society. The youngest of fifteen children from a poor Kansas family, he took up photography at the age of fifteen and won the first Julius Rosenwald Fellowship Award for photography seven years later. This success led to his hiring by Roy E. Stryker for the Farm Security Administration’s depression-era photography project. As the only black photographer on staff, Parks brought a unique perspective on the lives of African-Americans. This photograph is from Parks’s 1946 series taken at the Pittsburgh Grease Company. Many photos from this series featured the company’s black employees; here, a worker weighing out white powder (lime) is presented with an air of great dignity and determination.
His biggest impact, though, came not in his early photo-documentary projects, but his work as a magazine photographer. Parks was hired by Life magazine in 1948 as their first African American photographer. During his tenure with the magazine, he published the story of the Fontenelle family and similarly moving photo-essays—on an impoverished Brazilian boy named Flavio Da Silva and a young Harlem gang member named Leonard “Red” Jackson. For Parks the camera was more than simply a tool for recording society, it became a "weapon against poverty, racism, and discrimination."
| Publisher | Standard Oil Company, New Jersey |
|---|
Provenance research is ongoing for this and many other items in the Eskenazi Museum of Art permanent collection. For more information about the provenance of this artwork, please contact the department curator with specific questions.
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"Harvey Turner, grease maker, weighing lime. When added to the grease, lime gives it body. Pittsburgh Grease Plant. | Collections Online." Collections Online. Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, 2025. https://artmuseum.indiana.edu/collections-online/browse/object.php?number=79.200.XX.6.21