"TO A FELLOW ARTIST": MOMENTS WITHOUT PROPER NAMES, INSCRIBED BY GORDON PARKS TO CHARLTON HESTON'S WIFE, PHOTOGRAPHER AND ACTRESS LYDIA HESTON

PARKS, Gordon. Moments Without Proper Names. New York: Viking, (1975). Large square quarto, original blue cloth, original photographic dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box. $1100.

First edition, presentation copy inscribed by Gordon Parks to Lydia Heston, wife of Charlton Heston, "To Lydia, With best of wishes to a fellow artist, Gordon, New York, November 1978," with over 130 color and black-and-white photographic plates (many double page).

This compelling retrospective chronicles the work of Gordon Parks, whose award-winning career as photographer and filmmaker "constitutes an American success story of almost mythic proportions… The first African-American to work as a staff photographer for Life magazine and the first black artist to produce and direct a major Hollywood film… Parks was ranked among the most influential image makers of the postwar years." Moments Without Proper Names includes images from Parks' early days at the FSA under Roy Stryker (to whom he dedicates this book), his "most famous Life article" on an impoverished Brazilian boy named Flavio, his dynamic series on Muhammad Ali, and his later, painterly photography done in color. Also featured here is "his best-known photograph, which he titled 'American Gothic" (New York Times). Prologue and poems by Parks. Photographer and actress Lydia Clarke Heston was married to Charlton Heston for over six decades. She often worked as a set photographer on his films, and both were avid collectors of photography and photobooks.

Book fine, light edge-wear to colorful about-fine dust jacket.