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Gordon Parks
American, 1912-2006
Ferry Commuters, Staten Island, New York, 1946
Gelatin silver print
© Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation

In hats and jackets, a sea of professionals share in the daily routine of traveling to work via the Staten Island ferry. Their hats, shoulders, suit fabrics and crisp white shirts create a visual pattern of forms and tones, both discernably recognizable and pleasingly abstract. A few women break the pattern in the lower left, standing in a small curved circle.

Best-known for his documentary photojournalism of the 1940s-70s, Gordon Parks is one of the most celebrated photographers of the 20th century. This image is part of a project chronicling the Standard Oil Company industry and its workers. In Parks’s signature humanist style, the images document the American industrial landscape during World War II. Ferry Commuters emphasizes the rhythm and collective identity of New York workers just after the war.