{THROUGH JULY 1 Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, Museum Way, Lomita Dr. & Museum Way (off Palm Dr.), Stanford. 650- 723-4177; www.museum.stanford.edu. Hours: Wednesday through Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursdays 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Admission free to exhibit and all related events. Talk: ‘Exposures of Truth: Richard Avedon and Gordon Parks,’ April 18, 7:30 to 9 p.m., Kresge Auditorium, 555 Nathan Abbott Way, www.auroraforum.stanford.edu. Films: ‘Half Past Autumn: The Life and Works of Gordon Parks’ (2000), May 17, 6 p.m., Cantor Arts Center Auditorium; ‘Shaft’ (1971, directed by Gordon Parks), May 18, 7 p.m., Annenberg Auditorium, Cummings Art Building.}

By BETH KOHN

SENTINEL CORRESPONDENT

A distinctive chronicler of the 20th century, Gordon Parks was a versatile photographer who captured the steely dignity of the poor and working class. An artist, author and filmmaker and the first black staff photographer for Life magazine, his groundbreaking photo essays introduced Americans to the anonymous inhabitants of its often-invisible underclass.

Before he died in 2006, Parks chose 73 photos he believed represented his best work, and this new retrospective, “Bare Witness: Photographs by Gordon Parks,” debuts at Stanford University’s Cantor Arts Center before touring the country.

Parks’ work reveals the intimacy he developed with the people he photographed, whether they were impoverished tenement dwellers, polished high-fashion models or bold-face personas like Muhammad Ali and Ingrid Bergman. Writing on Parks’ career for the exhibition catalog, photography scholar Maren Stange notes he stands out as “perhaps uniquely versatile” because he was “equally engaged with all his subjects.” In addition to iconic images documenting the heydays of the Black Panther Party and the Nation of Islam, Parks also created purely commercial work, including glossy fashion shoots for Vogue and Glamour.

Documentary photography can be a delicate process of winning trust, chipping away at the protective walls people build to feel safe. “Bare Witness” reveals Parks’ eye for discerning the exceptional in the everyday, and his ability to glean material as an ally, not a voyeur. His many scenes of families in their homes — including a deathbed vigil and a battered woman lying with her child — testify to his acceptance and the level with which people were willing to expose themselves to him.

His camera was not just tolerated by those he photographed, but genuinely welcomed as a way to validate their experience. In “Return of American Soldiers” [undated], he catches an interracial assemblage of [presumably World War II] military men looking up from a ship railing. A number of white GIs gaze flatly at the camera with expressions of undisguised skepticism, regarding the photographer as an intruder. In contrast, wide grins animate the faces of the black soldiers, who look like they might be picking up a conversation with an old friend.

Working during a period when mass media ignored black people, one of Parks’ greatest contributions to American photography was an affectionate affirmation of black reality, exemplified by “American Gothic (Ella Watson)” (1942), one of Parks’ best-known images. An update of Grant Wood’s classic 1930 painting, Parks replaced the lean and weathered farm couple with the spare, sinewy frame of Ella Watson, a Farm Security Administration cleaning worker. Where Wood’s central figure holds a pitchfork, the inscrutable gaze of Watson exists in triptych between her upright mop and broom. Framed by the tools of her labor and juxtaposed against the muted backdrop of an American flag, her portrait invites prickly questions about what America stands for and who truly represents it.

Viewed in this era of crisp and disposable digital, the calculated and grainy imperfections of his [mostly black and white] prints radiate a subtle power. A 1970 picture of Black Panther luminaries Kathleen and Eldridge Cleaver, taken during the couple’s exile in Algiers, cloaks them almost completely in shadow. Their solemn and barely lit faces ooze mystery and cool. The focal point of the frame bounces between these half-hidden subjects and a background representation of Panther leader Huey Newton, his beret-capped head bursting heroically from a star.

Like the Depression-era studies by Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, Parks’ work spotlighted issues of social justice without eschewing bold composition. His legacy will be as an honest witness to history, stripped of pretense.

Contact Beth Kohn at fiercesf@igc.org.