Gordon Parks: Photographer, Musician, Poet, Novelist, Activist, Film Director

Posted on 30. Oct, 2009 by Leshell Hatley in Scholarly Celebrations

Gordon Parks was an amazing African-American! He was a groundbreaking American, photographer, musician, poet, novelist, journalist, activist, and film director. He is best remembered for his photo essays for Life magazine and as the director of the 1971 film Shaft.

“A great photograph is as timeless as a great painting because it captures and records the world as we know it,” wrote Parks and he went on to prove it through the body of work that he left as the testament of his multi-faceted artistry. He did not allow anyone to limit his boundaries; he imagined and then went on to bring what he imagined into being.

Parks was born on a small farm in Fort Scott, Kansas, to Sarah Ross and Jackson Parks in 1912. The youngest of fifteen children, his parents died when he was young and he migrated to St. Paul, Minnesota, as a teenager to live with his sister. His mid-western upbringing prepared him for the rough-and-tumble experiences he encountered after high school working as a waiter, a lumberjack, a piano player, band leader and semi-professional basketball player. Though a high school dropout, none of those appealed to Parks as his life’s career path. However, he became enthralled by the photographs he saw in a magazine which led him to “12 Million Black Voices” by Richard Wright and other photos essays about poverty and racism. It helped him to choose his life’s calling; it was the ideal vehicle to reflect reality of society via the artistic voice he had been seeking. By 1937, he had chosen photography as the mainstay of his professional life and started by buying a used camera from a pawn shop. Through much trial and error, he became a prodigy of self-taught talents, and within a few months, he had his pictures exhibited in the store windows of the Eastman Kodak store in Minneapolis. His work caught the eye of Marva Louis (the wife of the heavyweight boxing champion, Joe Louis) and she encouraged him to move to Chicago, where his opportunities would be much greater.

Moving to Chicago, Parks fell under the influence of the Southside Community Center, a Mecca of Black artists in every field. There he was provided a darkroom from where he launched a one man exhibit that allowed him to win the first Julius Rosenwald Fellowship awarded for photography. This was a major turning point in his journey as a master of the camera which developed as his professional style emanated out of the Depression-era project of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) that he eventually joined in 1942 at the age of 30. Parks became a correspondent for the first black air corps in 1942 as they trained for deployment in Europe. After working for the Standard Oil photography project, he became more interested in fashion photography and shot fashion assignments for Vogue magazine.

"American Gothic" by Gordon Parks

For the next six decades, Parks chronicled the Black experience in American life specializing in portraits of African American women. His signature portrait became known an “American Gothic“; it showed a Black cleaning woman named Ella Watson standing stiffly in front of an American flag, a mop in one hand and a broom in the other. The picture captured the racial mood of the nation’s capital at the time and also portrayed Park’s anger when he asked the woman to pose, after having been denied service at a clothing store, a theater and a restaurant.

A photo essay on a young Harlem gang leader won Parks a staff job as a photographer and writer with Life magazine in 1948. For the next 20 years, he did some of his most famous work traveling the globe and covering issues such as the fashion industry, poverty in Brazil, the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Stokely Carmichael (Sekou Toure), crime and gang violence, overt segregation in the South and celebrity portraits. His work in Brazil created some controversy when he highlighted the plight of an underprivileged boy named Flavio in a documentary which he wrote and directed. Though Flavio was dying from bronchial pneumonia and malnutrition, it brought donations that saved his life and paid for a new home for his family but the Brazilians resented it – the implications and ramifications. Thereafter, a Brazilian retaliated by doing a series of photo essays on rat-infested apartments in Harlem.

Parks had the ‘Black’ advantage to be able to cover the Nation of Islam, the Black Panthers and other Black nationalists that would have presented problems for White photographers. As the only Black photographer at “Life” magazine, Parks was sometimes characterized as “Uncle Tom” by Black militants especially after he refused to endorse a protest against the magazine by some Black photographers. But his years at the magazine contributed greatly to its circulation and cemented his reputation as a photo-journalist. He had an eye for elegance be it in Black urban life or Paris fashions amidst celebrities, statesmen and politicians. During the 1950s, he added to his resume as a consultant for the National Educational Television doing a series of documentaries on ghetto life.

Parks continued to develop and create new ways to convey lasting African American impressions through his work in photography including books and film/documentaries. In 1963 he published an autobiographical novel, “The Learning Tree,” becoming Hollywood’s first major black director with his film adaptation of his autobiographical novel. Parks also composed the film’s musical score and wrote the screenplay. Parks followed with “A Choice of Weapons,” a finely wrought autobiography in 1966.

Next, he tackled “Shaft” (1971), which centered on a Black detective and introduced Richard Roundtree, a former model, to movie audiences. It also gained for Isaac Hayes, the first African American to win an Academy Award for a movie theme. “Shaft” was a major success, and according to critics, it helped spawn the genre of African American action films that became known as “blaxploitation” movies. Parks then directed the sequel, “Shaft’s Big Score,” in 1972. Later on, he directed the comedy, “The Super Cops” (1974) and the drama, “Leadbelly” (1976) – a biopic of musician, Huddie Leadbelly, as well as several movies for television.

At the end of the 60s, Parks co-founded “Essence” Magazine and was its editorial director for the first two years. He combined poetry and photography, and wrote “A Poet and His Camera” (1968), “Whispers of Intimate Things” (1971), “In Love” (1971) and “Moments Without Proper Names” (1975). Other works included “Born Black” (1971) a collection of essays, “To Smile in Autumn” (1979) and a fiction novel, “Shannon,” (1981) about Irish immigrants and their social struggles in New York during the early 20th century.

Throughout his career, Parks received honors, accolades and awards too numerous to list. Some of them included the NAACP Spingarn Award (1972), an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Thiel College in Pennsylvania (1984) and a National Medal of Arts award from President Ronald Reagan in 1988. The United States Library of Congress recognized “The Learning Tree” and “Shaft” as culturally significant in 1989 and 2000 respectively, and it also curated the Gordon Parks Collection in 1995. He received an NAACP Image Award in 2003 and an honorary Doctor of Humanities from the Art Institute of Boston, Massachusetts, in 2004. The man who never finished high school was a recipient of 40 honorary doctorates from colleges and universities in the United States and England.

Parks lived in the fashionable New York address of 860 United Nations Plaza on the east side. He was married and divorced three times and had four children. He was also romantically involved with Gloria Vanderbilt, for quite sometime. He died of cancer at the age of 93.

Parks’ son, Gordon Parks, Jr. (1934-1979), directed blaxploitation films, including Super Fly.

-Obtained from wikipedia and the Los Angeles Sentinel. Visit these sites for more information.

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2. Bruce Smith: Animator, Film Director, Television Producer
3. Stephen L. Carter: Law Professor, Policy Writer, Columnist, Novelist
4. James Baldwin: Author and Civil Rights Activist
5. Dr. Sheri L. Parks: Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland

Tags: * Ellington Was Not a Street (2003) * Float Like a Butterfly: Muhammad Ali, 12 Million Black Voices, 40 honorary doctorate degrees, A Choice of Weapons, A Poet and His Camera (1968), AASA Journal of Scholarship and Practice and Independent Colleges and Universities, activist, Albert Price, American Gothic, Art Center College of Design, Black Nationalists, Black Panthers, Black Scholars Index, Board of Levine Museum of the New South, Born Black (1971), Character Education Partnership, co-founder of Essence Magazine, Department of African American Studies, Donald Cotton, Dr. M. Lucia James, Education Technology, Emmett W. Chappelle, film director, first African American elected to student body president, first black air corps, first Julius Rosenwald Fellowship, first major black director, Freedom Rider, George E. Becket, Gordon Parks, Gordon Parks Jr., Graduate School, Greenwich Village, Head of the UCLA Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program, Herbert Sheen, In Love (1971), Instructional Technology, Isaac Hayes - 1st African-American to win an Academy Award, Joe Louis, journalist, Kwanzaa, Leadbelly, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Life Magazine, Marva Louis, mathematics, Mint Museum of Art, Moments Without Proper Names (1975), musician, Nation of Islam, National Educational Television, National Fatherhood Leaders Group, New England Association of Schools and Colleges, North Star, novelist, Outstanding Teacher of the Year, Pacifica Radio, Paine College, Patricia Bath - laser-based device to perform cataracts surgery, Pentecostal Preacher at age 14, photographer, poet, Richard Wright, Robert L. Allen, Shaft Movie, Shaft's Big Score, Shannon (1981), Southside Community Center, Spelman College, Super Fly, The Hilltop, The Learning Tree, THE LIBRARIES ARE APPRECIATED from the Harlem Series 1943, The Super Cops, To Smile in Autumn (1979), Unbank the Fire: Visions for the education of African American children, University of Florida, University of North Texas, UTOPIA NEIGHBORHOOD CENTER, Vogue Magazine, Whispers of Intimate Things (1971), White House Task Force on Health Care Reform