Gordon Parks held a deep-seated belief in photography as a tool for social change. Completely self-taught, he dedicated much of his long career to recording the lives of his fellow African Americans, discovering that the camera could be a powerful "weapon against poverty and racism." In the 1940s, Parks began working for picture magazines, including Vogue and Life, tackling such wide-ranging subjects as Harlem gangs, Paris fashion shows, the slums of Rio de Janeiro, and iconic black figures-Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, and Eldridge Cleaver, among others. His sympathy for the backbreaking labor of menial jobs is reflected in this photograph of a young woman bent over her work in a rundown tenement, looking older than her years.

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