Parker received her degree in Art History from Wellesley College in 1963. After graduating, she pursued a career in painting and by 1970 had become involved in photography. Mostly self-taught, Parker has had more than 100 solo exhibitions in the United States and abroad. Her work is represented in numerous collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. ARTnews, American Photographer, and Camera Arts are among the numerous magazines which have published portfolios of her work. She has done residencies at Dartmouth College, The MacDowell Colony, and The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Parker has also lectured and conducted workshops extensively in the United States and abroad. In recent years, she did the title sequence for the PBS Television documentary Africans in America. In 1996, she was awarded the Alumnae Achievement Award from Wellesley College. Parker?s photographs often blend one image that is clear and one image that is mostly shadow. The viewer must try and discern between which perception is real and which is not. The ambiguity of the photograph and the humorous title engage the spectator?s imagination.