Milton James Parker was born in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, in 1929. The son of a schoolteacher and a postal worker, he showed an early aptitude for both science and art. He received his first camera — a Kodak Brownie — as a gift from his uncle at age twelve, and never stopped shooting.

After graduating from Howard University School of Medicine in 1955, Dr. Parker returned to Brooklyn to open a family practice on Nostrand Avenue. For the next thirty-five years, he served the community as a physician while pursuing photography with quiet dedication.

His photographs were rarely exhibited during his lifetime. Dr. Parker considered them a private record — a parallel practice of close observation. "Medicine teaches you to look carefully," he once wrote. "The camera taught me to see."

In the 1990s, a chance encounter with a curator at the Brooklyn Museum led to a small exhibition of his street photography. The response was immediate and enthusiastic. Over the following years, his work appeared in group shows at the Museum of the City of New York, the Schomburg Center, and internationally.

Dr. Parker passed away peacefully at home in Brooklyn in 2020, at the age of 91. He left behind an archive of over 15,000 negatives spanning six decades — a remarkable visual diary of a city and its people.

This gallery is maintained by the Parker family to honor his memory and share his vision with the world.