Parks recalls finding a magazine left behind by a passenger on the train which contained a portfolio of photographs of migrant workers and the terrible conditions in which they lived. So moved was Parks by those photographs that he went out and bought his first camera, a Voightlander Brilliant, at a pawnshop for $7.50. He states that this first purchase was “not much of camera, but a great name to toss around. I had bought what was to become my first weapon against poverty and racism.”
