Photographer Gordon Parks took a six-week journey throughout the US, from New York to Chicago to San Francisco to Los Angeles, to portray an unseen picture of crime in the country for Life Magazine in 1957... The photographs provided a richly-hued, cinematic portrayal of a largely hidden world of violence, police work, and incarceration, depicted with empathy and candor... Parks rejected clichés of delinquency, drug use, and corruption, instead opting for a more nuanced view of the social and economic factors tied to criminal behavior.
