Gordon Parks

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Gordon Parks

Civil Rights March on Washington, 1963.
Birth name Gordon Roger Alexander Buchannan Parks
Born November 30, 1912(1912-11-30)
Fort Scott, Kansas
Died March 07, 2006
New York City
Nationality African American
Field Photography
Writer
Musician
Poet
Journalism
[[film director		 Motion Picture Director]]
Composer
Works Life, photo essays
Shaft
The Learning Tree
Awards NAACP Image Award (2003)
PGA Oscar Micheaux Award (1993)[1]

National Medal of Arts(1988)
Spingarn Medal (1972)

Gordon Roger Alexander Buchannan Parks (November 30, 1912 – March 7, 2006) 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.

Contents

[edit] Early years

American Gothic (Ella Watson) is a parody of the Grant Wood painting of the same name.
American Gothic (Ella Watson) is a parody of the Grant Wood painting of the same name.

The youngest of 15 children, Parks was born into a poor, black family in segregated Fort Scott, Kansas. His mother, a staunch Methodist, was the main influence on his life, refusing to allow her son to justify failure with the excuse that he had been born black, and instilling in him self-confidence, ambition and a capacity for hard work.

When Parks was 15 years old, as said in his book "A Hungry Heart", his mother died. Soon after her death his father sent him to live with his married sister in St. Paul, Minnesota. He and his brother-in-law did not get along; he only lived there for a few weeks until he got in a fight with his brother-in-law, getting him evicted. He was forced to sleep in trolley cars, loiter in pool halls, and play piano in a brothel. Parks also worked as a factotum in a whites-only club and as a waiter on a luxury train.

Parks later commented: “I had a mother who would not allow me to complain about not accomplishing something because I was black. Her attitude was, ‘If a white boy can do it, then you can do it, too—and do it better, or don’t come home.’”

[edit] Photography career

One of Parks' later FSA photos of Ella Watson and her family
One of Parks' later FSA photos of Ella Watson and her family

In 1938, Parks was struck by photographs of migrant workers in a magazine and bought his first camera, a Voigtländer Brilliant, for $12.50 at a pawnshop.[2] The photo clerks who developed Parks' first roll of film, applauded his work and prompted him to get a fashion assignment at Frank Murphy's women's clothing store in St. Paul. Parks double exposed every frame except one, but that shot caught the eye of Marva Louis, heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis' elegant wife. She encouraged Parks to move to Chicago, where he began a portrait business for society women.

Example of Park's fashion photography
Example of Park's fashion photography

Over the next few years, Parks moved from job to job, developing a freelance portrait and fashion photographer sideline. He began to chronicle the city's South Side black ghetto and in 1941 an exhibition of those photographs won Parks a photography 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.[3] (named after Grant Wood painting American Gothic). The photo shows a black woman, Ella Watson, who worked on the cleaning crew for the FSA building, standing stiffly in front of an American flag, a broom in one hand and a mop in the background. Parks had been inspired to create the picture after encountering repeated racism in restaurants and shops, following his arrival in Washington, D.C.. Upon viewing it, Stryker said that it was an indictment of America, and could get all of his photographers fired;[4] he urged Parks to keep working with Watson, however, leading to a series of photos of her daily life. Parks, himself, said later that the first image was unsubtle and overdone; nonetheless, other commentators have argued that it drew strength from its polemical nature and its duality of victim and survivor, and so has affected far more people than his subsequent pictures of Watson.[5]

Portrait of Muhammad Ali
Portrait of Muhammad Ali

After the FSA disbanded, Parks remained in Washington as a correspondent with the Office of War Information, but became disgusted with the prejudice he encountered and resigned in 1944. Moving to Harlem, Parks became a freelance fashion photographer for Vogue. He later followed Stryker to the Standard Oil (New Jersey) Photography Project, which assigned photographers to take pictures of small towns and industrial centers. Parks's most striking of the period included Dinner Time at Mr. Hercules Brown's Home, Somerville, Maine (1944); Grease Plant Worker, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1946); Car Loaded with Furniture on Highway (1945); and Ferry Commuters, Staten Island, N.Y. (1946).

Parks renewed his search for photography jobs in the fashion world. Despite racist attitudes of the day, Vogue editor Alexander Liberman hired him to shoot a collection of evening gowns. Parks photographed fashion for Vogue for the next few years. During this time, he published his first two books, Flash Photography (1947) and Camera Portraits: Techniques and Principles of Documentary Portraiture (1948).

Photo essay on poverty
Photo essay on poverty

A 1948 photo essay on a young Harlem gang leader won Parks a staff job as a photographer and writer with Life magazine. For 20 years, Parks produced photos on subjects including fashion, sports, Broadway, poverty, racial segregation, and portraits of Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Muhammad Ali, and Barbra Streisand. His 1961 photo essay on a poor Brazilian boy named Flavio da Silva, who was dying from bronchial pneumonia and malnutrition, brought donations that saved the boy's life and paid for a new home for his family.

[edit] Film career

In the 1950s, Parks worked as a consultant on various Hollywood productions and later directed a series of documentaries commissioned by National Educational Television on black ghetto life.

Beginning in the 1960s, Parks branched out into literature, writing The Learning Tree (1963), several books of poetry illustrated with his own photographs, and three volumes of memoirs.

In 1969, Parks became Hollywood's first major black director with his film adaptation of his autobiographical novel, The Learning Tree. Parks also composed the film's musical score and wrote the screenplay.

Shaft, Parks' 1971 detective film starring Richard Roundtree, became a major hit that spawned a series of blaxploitation films. Parks' feel for settings was confirmed by Shaft, with its portrayal of the super-cool leather-clad black private detective hired to find the kidnapped daughter of a Harlem racketeer.

Parks also directed the 1972 sequel, Shaft's Big Score in which the protagonist finds himself caught in the middle of rival gangs of racketeers. Parks's other directorial credits included The Super Cops (1974), and Leadbelly (1976), a biopic of the blues musician Huddie Ledbetter.

In the 1980s, he made several films for television and composed the music and libretto for Martin, a ballet tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr., which premiered in Washington, D.C. in 1989 and was screened on national television on King's birthday in 1990.

[edit] Writing and music

In 1981, Parks turned to fiction with Shannon, a novel about Irish immigrants fighting their way up the social ladder in turbulent early 20th-century New York. Parks' writing accomplishments include novels, poetry, autobiography, and non-fiction including photographic instructional manuals and filmmaking books. Parks also wrote a poem called "The Funeral".

A self-taught pianist, Parks composed Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1953) and Tree Symphony (1967). In 1989, he composed and choreographed Martin, a ballet dedicated to civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. Parks also performed as a jazz pianist.

Parks was also a campaigner for civil rights; subject of film and print profiles, notably Half Past Autumn in 2000; and had a gallery exhibit of his photo-related, abstract oil paintings in 1981.

[edit] Private life

Parks was married and divorced three times. His wives were Sally Alvis, Elizabeth Campbell and Genevieve Young, a book editor whom he married in 1973 and divorced in 1979. For many years, Parks was romantically involved with the railroad heiress and designer Gloria Vanderbilt.[1]

Parks lived at the fashionable New York address of 860 United Nations Plaza on the east side.

Gordon Parks died of cancer at the age of 93.

[edit] Legacy

Parks is remembered for his activism, filmmaking, photography, and writings. He was the first African American to work at Life magazine, and the first to write, direct, and score a Hollywood film.

Parks was a co-founder of Essence magazine and one of the early contributors to the blaxploitation genre.

In 1984 Parks received an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Thiel College, a private, liberal arts college in Greenville, Pennsylvania.

In 1989, the United States Library of Congress deemed The Learning Tree "culturally significant" due to its being the first major studio feature film directed by an African-American. Thus, the film was preserved in the United States National Film Registry.

In 1995, Parks announced that he will donate his papers and entire artistic collection to the Library of Congress. One year later, "The Gordon Parks Collection" was currated.

In 1997, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. mounted a career retrospective on Parks, Half Past Autumn: The Art of Gordon Parks.

In 2000, the Library of Congress deemed Shaft to be "culturally significant", selecting it for NFR preservation as well.

In 2004 The Art Institute of Boston conferred the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters upon Parks

Parks himself said that freedom was the theme of all of his work, Not allowing anyone to set boundaries, cutting loose the imagination and then making the new horizons.[3]

Parks' son, Gordon Parks, Jr. (died 1979), directed blaxploitation films, including Super Fly.

An alternative learning center in Saint Paul, Minnesota renamed their school "Gordon Parks High School" after receiving a new building.

[edit] Works summary

[edit] Books

Parks' collection of poetry and photography
Parks' collection of poetry and photography
  • Camera Portraits (1948) (documentary)
  • The Learning Tree (1964) (semi-autobiographical)
  • A Choice of Weapons (1967) (autobiographical)
  • Born Black (1970) (compilation of essays and photographs)
  • To Smile in Autumn (1979) (autobiographical)
  • Voices in the Mirror (1990) (autobiographical)
  • The Sun Stalker (2003) (biography on J.M.W. Turner)
  • A Hungry Heart (Nov. 1, 2005) (autobiographical)

[edit] Compilations of poetry and photography

  • Gordon Parks: A Poet and His Camera
  • Gordon Parks: Whispers of Intimate Things
  • Gordon Parks: In Love
  • Gordon Parks: Moments Without Proper Names (1975)
  • Arias of Silence
  • Glimpses Toward Infinity
  • A Star for Noon - An Homage to Women in Images Poetry and Music (2000)
  • Eyes With Winged Thoughts (released Nov. 1, 2005)

[edit] Films

  • Flavio (1964)
  • Diary of a Harlem Family (1968)
  • The World of Piri Thomas' (1968)
  • The Learning Tree (1969)
  • Shaft (1971)
  • Shaft's Big Score (1972), director and composer
  • The Super Cops (1974)
  • Leadbelly (1976)
  • Solomon Northup's Odyssey (1984)
  • Martin (1989), PBS presentation of the stage performance of the ballet written on Martin Luther King, Jr.

[edit] Music

  • Moments Without Proper Names (1987)
  • Martin (1989) (ballet about Martin Luther King)
  • Shaft's Big Score

[edit] Documentaries on Parks

  • Soul in Cinema: Filming Shaft on Location (1971)
  • Passion and Memory (1986)
  • Malcolm X: Make it Plain (1994)
  • All Power to the People (1996)
  • Half Past Autumn: The Life and Works of Gordon Parks (2000)
  • Baadasssss Cinema (2002)
  • Soul Man: Isaac Hayes (2003)

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ [http://imdb.com/name/nm0662953/awards Gordon Parks, IMDb
  2. ^ Gordon Park, bio Gale Group
  3. ^ a b Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb. 'Life' Photographer And 'Shaft' Director Broke Color Barriers The Washington Post. 8 March 2006.
  4. ^ Eamonn McCabe. "American beauty", The Guardian (G2), 2006-03-10, p. 8. 
  5. ^ Lawrence W. Levine (Dec. 1992). "The Folklore of Industrial Society: Popular Culture and Its Audiences" 97 (5): 1369–99. 

[edit] External links

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