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Unforeseen DestinyGordon Parks and the Work that sParked his aWard-WinninG Career

2 He wasn’t supposed to live Park’s Life Prior to His Photography

the storY, the Life

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3and abundantly so. but he did An appendix of Parks life and the many accomplishments that comprised it.

“Unlocked Doors,” an essay on his most prominent work, American Gothic, 1942

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5He wasn’t supposed to live

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fULL naMeGordon roger alexander Buchanan Parks

LineaGe Parks was the youngest of fifteen children by sarah Parks and andrew Jackson Parks.

1912 Gordon Parks is born in ft. scott, kansas.

He was stillborn— no heartbeat, declared dead by the family doctor, and put aside for later burial. But his life was nowhere near over. Another doctor in the delivery room, using both faith and an unexpected idea, immersed the newborn into ice-cold water. The shock from the coldness caused his heart to start beating, and the baby, Gordon Parks, was soon crying and

healthy. This moment, like many others in his life, required Parks’ endurance and tenacity, and as his life would soon reveal, these are this trait would lead him to a life of innovation and ingenuity, a blessed one, an unexpected destiny.

Gordon Parks Was naMed after the doCtor Who saved his Life at Birth

1927 sarah Parks dies, and Gordon moves to st. Paul, Mn. 1933 Marries sally alvis.

1933 Marries sally alvis. 1937 Parks buys his first camera. 1937–42 Freelance Fashion Photographer 1942 Works for Farm Security Administration

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1943 Office of War Information photographer 1944 First Black photographer at Vogue1942 Works for Farm Security Administration

9Parks grew up poor in Fort Scott, Kansas. His mother died when Parks was only fifteen, and seeking to honor his mother’s wishes, his father sent him to live in the north with his older sister in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Yet, her husband kicked him out soon afterwards, and Park was forced to drop out of high school and survive homeless and on the

streets. For a long time, his life was filled with the horror of failure that his teachers’ had instilled in him. He thrived in multiple jobs in Minneapolis until age 25.

he Was so doWn that he CoULd onLY Go UP, and that is What he CoMMitted hiMseLf to do.

* some sources say that he was fourteen.

1947 Publishes Flash Photography (technical)1944–48 standard oil Company of new Jersey (sonJ) corporate photographer

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11He wasn’t supposed to live but he did

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13The photo clerks who developed Parks’ first roll of film prompted him to get a fashion assignment at Frank Murphy’s clothing store in St. Paul. Parks caught the eye of Marva Louis, heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis’ wife, who encouraged him to move to Chicago, where he began a portrait business for society women.

Over the next few years, Parks developed a freelance portrait and fashion sideline and began to chronicle the city’s South Side black ghetto. In 1941, an exhibition of those won Parks a fellowship with the

Farm Security Administration. Working as a trainee under Roy Stryker, Parks created one of his best known photographs, American Gothic, Washington, D.C.

1961 divorces wife

thUs BeGan Park’s JoUrneY as a PhotoGraPhY Pioneer.

1962 Marries elizabeth Campbell 1963 Publishes the Learning tree1948–72 Life Magazine photojournalist

14 Gordon Parks at the Crossroads

1968 directs emmy-award-winning diary of a harlem family film 1969 directs the Learning tree film

Unlocked Doorstext froM essaY BY PhiLiP BrookMan in Park’s HalF Past autumn anthoLoGY

15Gordon Parks at the Crossroads Parks soon learned that capturing intolerance “was not so easy as I assumed it would be. “Then Stryker suggested that he speak to Ella Watson, a government char woman also working at the FSA. She became perhaps his most important subject.

In August 1942, Parks listened as Watson told her story. “She had struggled alone after her mother had died and her father had been killed by a lynch mob,” he recalls.

His first photographs of Washington were portraits of workers on the street and children in a housing project in the city’s neighborhood.

“What’s more, the first child had been stricken with paralysis a year before its mother died. Now this woman was bringing up these grandchildren on a salary hardly suitable for one person.”

She had gone through high school, married and become pregnant. Her husband was accidentally shot to death two days before the daughter was born. By the time the daughter was eighteen she had given birth to two illegitimate children, dying two weeks after the second child’s birth.

After hearing these words Parks asked if he could photograph her. He then exposed his first negatives of Watson, producing a series of images that today are icons of American culture. His first and best known picture of her is American Gothic, 1942. It shows a dignified and serious woman staring straight into Parks’s lens. His simple, geometric composition mimics her imperturbable stare. Looking

1970–73 founding editor, essence Magazine 1972 awarded spingarn Medal 1973 divorces Liz Campbell and marries Genevieve Young

Unlocked Doors

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straight into her stolid eyes, one is drawn into her world, right through any stereotypical or prototypical barriers that might normally be established by her appearance. She is posed like the farmer in Grant Wood’s archetypal composition American Gothic, 1930, holding a broom and mop in place of the farmer’s pitchfork. Behind her, hanging from above and filling

the frame like a powerful, translucent beacon of irony, is the American flag. “Stryker thought it was just about the end,” remembers Parks. “He said, ‘My God, this can’t be published, but it’s a start.”

Clearly, a humanistic connection— a strong relationship based on some form of mutual understanding— was made between the photographer and his subject. It is apparent in this photograph that Parks, early in his career, was able to listen, understand, and silently convey his own compassion for Watson as a complex individual with a serious story to tell. It is Parks who posed Watson, who constructed the stark visual ambiguity of the

A humanistic connection— a strong relationship based on some form of mutual understanding— was made between the photographer and his subject.

Ella Watson’s gaze out of this photograph is truly transcendent. One glimpse into her eyes reveals the depth of her understanding, of the dichotomy between beauty and tragedy, and the irony implied by the limp flag hanging over her head.

1974 directs the super Cops film 1975 Publishes moments without Proper names poetry anthology 1976 directs leadbelly film

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1976 directs leadbelly film

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scene, and whose eyes met hers at the moment the portrait was made. She looks directly at him as he stands in for the rest of us who have since encountered her stare. Here, for the first time, he was able to surpass his own feelings to express his under-standing of her experience. Consequently, this photograph has become a portrait of both America and one unique individual. “Photographing bigotry was, as Stryker had warned, very difficult,” wrote Parks. “The evil of its effect however, was discernable in the black faces of the oppressed and their blighted neighborhood lying within the shadows of the Capitol. It was in

those shadows that the charwoman lived, and I followed her through them—to her dark house, her storefront church; to her small happinesses and daily frustrations.”Parks continued to photograph Watson and her family during

the ensuing months. Following on the heels of his project about poverty in Chicago’s south side, her story became his second sustained photographic essay. Watson was for him symbolic of the oppression he experienced—both in Washington

Watson was for him symbolic of the oppression he experienced—both in Washington and in Kansas as a child, yet Parks sought to picture her life as one filled with love and spirituality as wwell as one fraught with difficulty.

1979 divorces Genevieve Young 1979 Publishes to smile in autumn 1981 Publishes shannon 1984 Publishes the Odyssey of solomon

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creating a framework for investigating the effects of bigotry on one family and showing the various ways they had risen above them. One of the most complex and enlightening of these images is Ella Watson and Her Grandchildren, August 1942.

This multilayered image cleverly unveils four generations of Watson’s family together in her home. The

It was in those shadows that the charwoman lived, and I followed her through them—to her dark house, her storefront church; to her small happinesses and daily frustrations.”

photograph is divided into binary sections that each convey different impressions. The tension between these parts creates a meaningful narrative that begs questions about her past and the unknowable future awaiting her grandchildren.

On the left side of this picture Watson sits in her kitchen surrounded by the kids. She has just finished feeding them and everyone is relaxing, lost in thought on a hot summer evening. This domestic scene might be one from a play, framed by curtains on the left and the vertical door frame on the right. The lighting is also theatrical. As Parks looks in with his camera

and in Kansas as a child—yet Parks sought to picture her life as one filled with love and spirituality as well as one fraught with difficulty. He accompanied her between work and home and photographed her environment: her apartment, street, church, and grocery store. He also depicted her adopted daughter and young grandchildren growing up in this segregated environment,

1974 directs the super Cops film 1975 Publishes moments without Proper names poetry anthology 1976 directs leadbelly film

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The photograph collapses four generations into a complex tableau that represents both individual and collective experience.

a translucent reflection of, or counter- point to, the theatrically constructed scene opposite. Watson’s adopted daughter appears as an apparition in a hazy mirror. She is relaxed and seated, yet seems to hover within its frame. The introspective look on the daughter’s face mirrors that of Watson herself, she symbolizes a young Ella daydreaming about her future. Indeed, the daughter is smiling and looking directly at a framed photograph of an elegantly dressed

from outside the room, their space seems to recede illusionistically like a stage set. One sees right through to the back door and into the August twilight. The family is posed as though in a painting; Watson cradles her youngest grandchild on her lap, recalling innumerable works of art throughout history that depict a mother and child, symbols of birth hope for the future. Parks’s photograph is bisected vertically by the geometry of the kitchen door. While the left side portrays the family realistically—they are posed much in the spirit of 1930s documentary representation—the right side emerges like an otherworldly dream,

couple who are, as Parks remembers, Watson’s parents. They appear as a page from her family album that, after so much tragedy, emotionally connects the different people in the picture. These astutely composed links bring together each generation of the family as one, echoing Parks’s portrayal of Watson as an individual with a past and a future, dreams and a harshly real present.

1974 directs the super Cops film 1975 Publishes moments without Proper names poetry anthology 1988 awarded national Medal of arts

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1988 awarded national Medal of arts

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25After a fruitful career of sharing America’s deepest culture, Parks is remembered for his activism, filmmaking, photography, and writings. Parks was a co-founder of Essence magazine and one of the early contributors to the blaxploitation genre in film. He is credited with many books and has influenced many film-makers, photographers, and artists who have thus succeeded him.

Parks ConstantLY strived throUGh varioUs Media to Make freedoM the theMe of aLL of his Works.

26 He wasn’t supposed to live but he did and abundantly so

27He wasn’t supposed to live but he did and abundantly so

28 Municipal

Custodial

Creative

Civilian Conservation CorpsmanLumberjack

Busboy Porter Waiter Bartender Ranch hand

Piano player in a bordelloFreelance photographerFashion photographerBand leaderOrchestra musician

earLY Career Pre-Career

JoBs

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Photographer Film Director AuthorPoetHumanitarianActivist

Life MaGaZine and BeYond

To praise someone as a “Renaissance Man” is to resort to one of the most overused cliches, but in the case of Gordon Parks, the phrase is hardly avoidable. Successful as a novelist, poet, movie director, composer, and musician, Parks perhaps remains best known as a photographer because of his years with Life magazine and his particular mastery of the photo-essay.

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1990

2000

2003

2005

2005

1947

1948

1964

1967

1970

1975

1979

CoMParison of Work CateGories

PhotoGraPhY

MUsiC and theaterfiLM

Books and CoMPiLations

Flash Photography

Camera Portraits: Techniques

of Documentary Portraiture

The Learning Tree

A Choice of Weapons

Born Black

Proper Names

To Smile in Autumn

1964 Flavio

1968 Diary of a Harlem Family

1968 The World of Piri Thomas

1969 The Learning Tree

1971 Shaft

1987 Moments Without Proper Names

1989 Martin (Martin Luther King) ballet

non- PhotoGraPhiC Works

Books and CoMPiLations

MUsiC and theater

fiLM

1972 Shaft’s Big Score

1974 The Super Cops

1976 Leadbellynon- PhotoGraPhiC

PhotoGraPhiC

voices in the Mirror

A Star for Noon

The Sun Stalker

A Hungry Heart

Eyes With Winged Thoughts

Gordon Parks: A Poet and His Camera

Gordon Parks: Whispers

of Intimate Things

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CoMParison of Work CateGories

aWards

1941 Julius Rosenwald Fellowship

1961 Photographer of the Year by ASMD

1966 Notable Book award

1968 Emmy Award

1972 Springarn Medal

1978 Christopher Award for Flavio photoessay

1984 Honorary Doctor of Humanities

degree from Thiel College

1988 National Medal of Arts Award

1989 The Learning Tree film is deemed “culturally,

historically, or aesthetically significant.”

1990 National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame

1996 “The Gordon Parks Collection”curration

1996 Honorary Doctorate of Letters from University of D.C.

1998 American National Medal of the Arts

by National Endowment of the Arts

2000 Shaft is deemed “culturally, historically, or

aesthetically significant.”

2002 Jackie Robinson Foundation’s Life Achievement Award.

2004 Honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters

CateGoriCaL CoMParison of aWards vs Works

PHOTOGRAPHY

MUSIC AND THEATERfiLM

Books and CoMPiLations

aWards

Works

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1986199419962000

20022003

Berry, S.L. Gordon Parks. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1991

Bush, Martin H. The Photographs of Gordon Parks. Wichita, Kansas: Wichita State University, 1983.

Donloe, Darlene. Gordon Parks: Photographer, Writer, Composer, Film Maker [Melrose Square Black American series]. Los Angeles: Melrose Square Publishing Company, 1991

Parr, Ann, and Gordon Parks. Gordon Parks: No Excuses. Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company, 2006.

Stange, Maren. Bare Witness: photographs by Gordon Parks. Milan: Skira, 2006.

Turk, Midge, and Herbert Danska. Gordon Parks. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1971.

Soul in Cinema: Filming Shaft on LocationPassion and Memory Malcolm X: Make it Plain All Power to the PeopleHalf Past Autumn: The Life and Works of Gordon ParksBaadasssss Cinema Soul Man: Isaac Hayes

BiBLioGraPhY fiLMs

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36 Unexpected DestinyThis book was designed by De Andrea

Nichols at the Sam Fox School of De-

sign in St. Louis, MO. Fall 2009

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