Gordon Parks (1912-2006) was an American photographer, film director, writer and composer. He directed “Shaft” (1971) and co-founded Essence magazine. He was the first black photographer at Life magazine. He was the first black director at any big Hollywood studio. He was muse to Gloria Vanderbilt and godfather to one of Malcolm X’s children. He has at least three schools named after him.
He took pictures for Life magazine from 1948 to 1968, then the top weekly photojournalism magazine in America. He was big on two sorts of photography: high fashion and the photo essay. In the 1950s he helped Life’s white middle-class readers to see the injustice of Jim Crow; in the 1960s he helped them to understand why blacks were so angry.
He was the 15th child of a poor dirt farmer in Kansas. He was born dead. His namesake, Dr Gordon, got his heart started by putting him in ice-cold water.
At high school a white teacher told him a university education would be a waste – he would never be more than a porter. He dropped out of high school and later became a porter.
In 1937 when he was a waiter on the train from Chicago to Seattle he looked at a magazine left on the train, at an article on migrant workers:
I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera.
At Seattle he bought a second-hand camera. He did not even know how to load the film! But ten years later he was the only black photographer at Vogue! Along the way the photographers who took those pictures of the migrant workers trained him. They told him you cannot take a picture of a bigot and write “bigot” under the picture. The picture itself must show the bigotry.
Among his qualities:
- He could quickly gain the trust of people, from Ingrid Bergman to Elijah Mohammed to Life magazine to the Black Panthers to Warner Brothers to, most important of all, the people he took pictures of.
- He took sky-blue chances: he taught himself photography, composed music, followed a gang leader, tried to get hired at companies that would not even hire blacks as cleaning people, etc.
- Love of art and beauty: Even as a waiter he went to art museums. That art would later inform his photography.
- Anger at racism and poverty.
For example: Millions of white photographers wanted to work for Life. He knew he would never get an interview. So instead he just walked into the office of the editor and talked him into looking at his pictures!
He was careful not to let racism limit him. Yet it was not till he worked in Paris for Life that he fully understood how American racism had kept him from flowering. It was then that he spread his wings beyond photography and, in time, became a composer, writer and film director.
See also:
I had never heard of him Abagond. He is fantastic! Thanks for the intro. =)
Brilliant post!
Very informative post. Gordan Parks authored an autobiography, The Learning Tree. There is also a film adaptation of The Learning Tree.
dbg
Wow.. a lot of his photos were insanely beautiful. I really enjoyed 20, 22, & 23. Picture 28, captioned: “The Negro in the Cities, The Cry That Will Be Heard” gave me chills. Thank you for bringing such a great talent to our attention.
I heard and read about him once in a magazine. It was either “Time” or “Life”. He was a talented photographer.
Nice pictures! Much respect!
Mr. Parks captured the setting and overall scene of those moments in time. For example, the images of two very stark and separate drinking fountains/entrances with identifying signs. His photographs displayed the unfabricated truth of the world around us.
Those photos are brilliant.
what beautiful photography i’d never heard of gordon parks before
sorry i am peanut
I never knew he shot “The Cry…”
What a brilliant photographer.
Gordan Parks, great individual
Didnt he work with Malcolm X on his auto biography?
Amazing story of an amazing person. It’s really sad that I only heard of him and what he has done recently.
I’m surprised that so many people are just learning about Parks and his legacy. He was truly one of the great American artists of the 20th Century. People speak of Warhol and Pollock as if they were gods, but Parks scarcely gets a nod in terms of how he shaped mid-century culture.
Abagond, you probably could have done this post with no words at all, and it would have been just as powerful.
wow
Abagond, Thank you so much for writing this post. I absolutely love Gordon Parks’ work. Have you seen “The Learning Tree”? It’s based on his novel by the same name, which is based on his life. You really threw me curve ball when you put this up. Tiffany Pollard then BANG… Gordon Parks! Your blog is the first thing i do when I get to work in the morning. It gets me prepared for the day ahead. The breadth of your posts is amazing. Thanks again Abagond.
I remember Gordon Parks, and I remember reading his biography and the seeing the subsequent movie. Gordon Parks demonstrates how so many of our past geniuses were autodidacts, because of the limited opportunities available to them
@ The Cynic
Me too. Life magazine thought otherwise and did NOT print them.
Well, there is a book there: the pictures of Gordon Parks that Life magazine did not print because they were a white magazine and would only go so far.
@ Claude Jordan
I did that on purpose – but I have wanted to do a post on him for a long time. I have heard of “The Learning Tree” but have not read or seen it. Yet.
I am a bit surprised he is not better known. The 100th anniversary of his birth is coming up on November 30th so you will probably hear more and more of him in the coming months. It will be interesting to see if Google gives him a logo on his birthday.
Thank you for this beautiful and informative post. The depth and breadth of his talent and determination and sense of justice are stunning.
Google should mark his birthday, but I’m not holding my breath.
What beautiful work!! I was not aware of him before and his legacy. Some of the works are breathtakingly beautiful!
Very haunting images of the past…I love all things vintage and photography is no exception. Thanks for this post, Abagond!
I’m struck by the photos of the Black women with their children. Despite the racism of the times, they still managed to look so dignified and lovely in their shift dresses and high heels.
Simply gorgeous work.
[...] Gordon Parks (1912-2006) was an American photographer, film director, writer and composer. "I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera." -Gordon Parks [...]
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Mr Parks was a painter and story teller with his camera.
He had sensitivity for the people he snapped – you feel he is on their side, without judgment – but what personal courage he must have also had.
The colour photos of the US segragation-era shows a world of intimidation and restriction. Yet the people intimidated and restricted by this world, are elegant and dignified: you see their resolve to get on with their lives as normally and optimistically as possible, in spite of an environment that impoverished and beat them down.
Take picture 9, the black+white photo of Ingrid Bergman.
At the time of the photo, Ms Bergman was conducting an extra-marital affair with Italian film director Roberto Rossellini on the island of Stromboli.
It was a scandal. Ms Bergman was denounced on the US Senate floor as an “instrument of evil”. She was refused work. The photo of her with the 3 women in black, captures her condemnation as Outsider. A condition Mr Parks understood intimately, and conveyed brilliantly in one shot.
But if he didn’t have courage he would not have gained the access and the trust his subjects bestowed upon him, like black muslim, Malcolm X or black panther, Eldridge Cleaver, men other men were intimidated by. But he gained their respect and kept his integrity. He was his own man.
I once heard that Mr Parks was threatened with assassination after Malcolm X was gunned down. The FBI had to shield him and his family as a result. MLK and JFK had already been shot dead already, so Mr Parks was a much easier target… But, he simply kept on working, he kept his conscience, and continued the world as it was and blaze his creative trail.
He knew about beauty, but didn’t restrict it to high fashion and glamorous people. I think I can look at his photos and “see” the story because he makes his images – evening ugly and upsetting images – so luminous.
I hope Mr Parks is remembered and treasured.
In doing so, it might bring the work of other photographers to light, such as black South African, Ernest Cole, who photographed South Africa under Apartheid, but had to live to the rest of life in exile:
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/11/16/arts/design/20101117_COLESS-6.html
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/11/16/arts/design/20101117_COLESS-2.html
correction: he simply kept on working… continued to photograph the world as it was and blaze his creative trail.
So this is the man behind those iconic images; Some of them are very familiar. Can you imagine looking through his portfolio? Your mouth will be catching flies!
One photograph really does say a thousand words
I usually chastise photographers for not being Real artists and simply clicking a button, but the images that Mr Parks captured takes a certain skill and passion that can easily rival the Picasso’s and Da Vinci’s of this world
@Bulanik
thanks for the Ernest Cole links. I hadn’t heard of him. When it comes to South Africa and Apartheid I usually never comment or get into conversations about it; My anger at the inhumanity just mutes me. Those photographs are really important.
A Protest song can only go so far
I always liked Gordon Parks’ photos not only because he knew how to make any image beautiful, but because he was angry – angry at poverty, and racism, injustice. So, he used his camera lens like a weapon; when he ‘shot’, he fired into the viewer’s visual cortex, which would stay in the mind’s eye for days, being carried along by blood circulation before embedding itself in the heart. That is the power great art and the ability of great artist like Gordon Parks.
For some reason, photo 26, of the black nanny holding the white baby, with a well-dressed white woman to the side (perhaps the child’s mother?), made me pause a long while. The servitude portrayed disturbs me the most for a couple of reasons.
On one level, it reminded me, again of another photo from South Africa’s apartheid era, this time taken by Ian Berry in 1969, which shows a black woman employed to look after a white child:
http://todayspictures.slate.com/livapart09/images/LON30495.jpg
I see in the 2 nannies eyes that far-away look that seems like unwavering self-discipline in the face of desperate frustration: caring for those that tie you down, treating you and yours like you are less than human…
Those photos resonated with this one, which show a bare-breasted black slave feeding a white baby:
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvyv4hm4DT1r4vhsho1_1280.png
Old photos taken by white people showing their private use of the black human beings they owned, are rare.
Who knows, this photo could have had a caption on the back like:
“Our child with the slave we gave him as a gift”.
I can think of few images like this one in the photo-collections of American life I have pondered over through the years. Perhaps such photos of black people were once plentiful, forming a perfectly normal part of family photo-albums.
But later such incriminating imagery was destroyed and hidden, through shame and guilt?
This is probably why the photography of Gordon Parks, among others, is so precious. The stories, many untold, are in there. All we have to do is look.
Many, or most, photographers end up, if they are lucky, with one enduring image which receives “iconic” status, and becomes famous in popular culture.
Because of Mr Parks’ tenacity, hard work, integrity, courage, self-made luck and immense talent, he was able to produce many great photographers. He was fortunate enough to spend a decent portion of his life doing what he loved and getting paid for it.
Unfortunately, many black photographers who produce powerful and enduring images – like Gordon Parks – do not get much recognition at all.
One or 2 are only being honoured now with recognition.
For example:
Sam Nzima, who photographed a dying Hector Pieterson, a 13-year-old shot (in the back) by police during the 1976 Soweto uprising:
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/pb-110427-nzima-da.photoblog900.jpg
These pictures are indeed an education and a glimpse into our collective american soul; Parks was a master. Thanks so much to all y’all for the links you’ve shared, too!
Abagond, you rock like an avalanche. :~)
Gordon Parks was born 100 years ago today!!! (Not honoured by Google.)
100! These photos are amazing. He was talented. I’m not surprise Google would not recognize Gordon Parks. Glad you did.
Reblogged this on Lateral Love Australia and commented:
He was careful not to let racism limit him. Yet it was not till he worked in Paris for Life that he fully understood how American racism had kept him from flowering. It was then that he spread his wings beyond photography and, in time, became a composer, writer and film director.
[...] Gordon Parks. [...]
That is so inspiring and his photos are amazing. I’ve reposted on Transitionstande
I am ashamed to say I had never heard of him although I had seen his photos (and, of course, seen Shaft).
Amazing.
Thanks for this.
Very cool! I like his photos! And he directed Shaft, eh? I’ve learned a little bit today.
Thx!
My dear Abagond…Thank you so-o-o-o much for this! I grew up with the photography of Gordon Parks in Life (it was bigger than the rest of the magazines!). I grew up with those “white only”/”colored only” lines of demarcation at the movies (we had to sit in the balcony in the white theaters), at public restrooms (in public places like Francis Marion Square downtown!); I grew up with those beautiful, Black women who, more often than not, MADE those beautiful outfits (from memory, or a Simplicity pattern) because they certainly couldn’t afford to buy them from the store (my Mama could lay you out for Easter — for just the price of the cloth from Edward’s five & dime!).
The photo of the little girl and her Mama looking in the store window made me catch my breath. I cannot tell you the number of times my Mama and I made that walk down King St. in Charleston. And though she couldn’t buy the dresses — she assured me she could make them — and she did, and nobody ever knew they weren’t store-bought!
@ Bulanik…Though I knew of Ernest Cole and Sam Nzima’s iconic, apartheid-era photo, thanks for all the links! You said:
“For some reason, photo 26, of the black nanny holding the white baby, with a well-dressed white woman to the side (perhaps the child’s mother?), made me pause a long while. The servitude portrayed disturbs me the most for a couple of reasons.
It was, more than likely the child’s mother, but I did not see “servitude” in that Black woman’s face at all ( art is, after all, one’s interpretation, based on lived experience, IMHO). What I saw was simmering, righteous indignation – not at the child she held, but the situation that made the holding necessary (in front of a camera lens no less!).
Abagond, you honor Mr. Parks most beautifully with this post. There’s nothing I love more than US, proudly telling our own stories! Thank you again…
wow AWESOME! They need to make a movie about his life ASAP. Those pictures are stunning, many of them I’d seen before, but I’d never knew who they were photographed by…now i do. THANKS Abagond and PLZ DON’T HATE ME!
Reblogged this on shafiqah1 and commented:
#Alwayswillbe
I am a huge Gordon Parks Fan
a picture does indeed worth more than a thousand words.
Mr Abagond thank you in deed for this wonderfull and in depth work about Mr Gordon parks.
I am French west indian, I don’t even remember how I got to you. But let me tell you Mr Abagond “hat down”.
I have never heard of this man before. As someone said, we know about Warhol? Basquiat but nothing about Gordon Parks.
I am amazed to found out that he was cofounder of Essence magazine. My sister and I have been assiduous readers of Essence magazine.
Parks What is sad is that Mr Parks,had listened to what the white teacher told him “it’s a waste to go to university” and became a porter.
Fortunately for him he saw this magazine.
His work is a masterpiece, those photos are part of black history.
Thank you again Mr Abagond, and let me tell you that from now on I’ll be talking about Mr Gordon Parks to everybody.
One of my acquaintances is a white photographer and was even teacher in photography at the university in Paris; I’ll be introducing Mr Gordon Parks to him when dealing with the work of renowned photographer.
[...] Gordon Parks: African American photographer famous for his pictures of America in the 1950s and ’60s. (Abagond article) [...]
@ Deb
Actually we saw the same thing.
I didn’t see “servitude” in the face of the black woman’s face either.
Not her face.
I meant her situation.
Another photographer that captured some powerful moments was Matt Herron, in these images, which enrage me even now when I see how this grown man handles this child…it says everything, everything:
http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2011/06/25/mississippi-matt-herron/
@Bulanik…I apologize for my misinterpretation of your comment (a knee-jerk reaction to “my familiar,” no doubt), I’ll do better “listening” next time! Glad to hear you saw it too though.
Thanks for that great link and yes, that Herron photo was enraging and, as you said — it does just say everything about these alleged United States, both then and still! {smdh}. I spent some time this morning perusing the Iconic Photos site and not only did I appreciate all the photos, I learned quite a bit I didn’t know from the posts as well! Thank you for that…