John Edwin Mason, The Latest and Truest World: Gordon Parks and Muhammad Ali This talk explores the special relationship between Gordon Parks and Muhammad Ali. Parks photographed the heavyweight champion for two separate Life magazine photo-essays. The time that they spent together allowed a friendship to grow. It was built in part on an almost familial bond between Ali and Parks, who was thirty years older. Parks’ unwillingness to accept either the celebrity or the public disdain that surrounded the often controversial boxer was equally important. His words and images described a man, not a cliché. Historian and photographer John Edwin Mason teaches in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia. He has written extensively on South African social and cultural history and on the history of photography in South Africa and the United States. As a photographer, he has worked on a number of long-term documentary projects, including a book about Cape Town, South Africa's nearly two-centuries-old New Year’s’ Carnival. He is currently writing a book about Gordon Parks. Registration is required.
