Gordon Parks: renaissance man

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Sept, 1998 by Philip Brookman

Evolving from ultrarealism, poignancy, and emotionalism into a lyrical style that frequently crosses over to abstraction, Parks' photographs have brought him inernational fame.

Over a career spanning more than 50 years, Gordon Parks has mastered many media to express an uplifting and insightful message of hope and beauty in the face of adversity. Born in Fort Scott, Kan., in 1912, he overcame poverty and racism to rise to the top of the photographic field. After his mother died when he was 15, Parks left Kansas for Minneapolis and supported himself by working as a piano player, busboy, basketball player, and Civilian Conservation Corpsman. Al the age of 25, he seriously began to consider photography as a career direction. While working as a waiter on the Northern Pacific Railroad, he read voraciously, wrote music, and, through reading the magazines of the day, was introduced to pictures made by such contemporary social documentary photographers as Ben Shahn, Jack Delano, Carl Mydans, Dorothea Lange, John Vachon, and Walker Evans. "They were photographing poverty, and I knew poverty so well," Parks recalls.

Ambitious, but inexperienced, Parks' first big break in professional photography came when he convinced the owner of Frank Murphy's women's clothing store in Saint Paul, Minn., to let him try his hand at fashion photographs. His pictures led him to other fashion assignments in Chicago. By 1941, with recognition lot his art growing, Parks became the first photographer to receive a fellowship from the Julius Rosenwald Foundation. He chose to work with Roy Stryker at the Farm Services Administration (FSA), a government agency designed to call attention to the plight of the needy during the Depression and to create a historical record of social and cultural conditions across the country. In January, 1942, he moved his family to Washington, D.C., where he encountered a city divided by race and class. One of the first photos Parks was inspired to make during that period is considered his signature image--"American Gothic, Washington, D.C." (1942).

In 1943, the FSA wits dissolved for political reasons, but Stryker arranged for Parks to move with him to the Office of War Information. One of Parks' assignments wits to photograph the 332nd Fighter Group, the first black air corps. He documented its training program, but was refused permission to accompany the group to Europe, denying publicity to African-American participation in the war.

He then followed Stryker to the Standard Oil (New Jersey) Photography Project, which allowed some of the best photographers of the time to take pictures in small towns and industrial centers throughout the U.S. Some of Parks' most striking and influential work was made during this time, including "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).

In 1944, 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. Following that first assignment, 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).

Crime and fashion

Parks found fashion photography interesting and rewarding, but also wanted to use his talent as a photojournalist. In 1948, he became the first black photographer at Life magazine. His initial assignments included photographing gang warfare in Harlem as well as fashions in New York and Paris. "Suddenly for me," he remembers, "two extremely diverse worlds were about to converge--one of crime, the other of high fashion."

In what was to become his trademark style, Parks chose to focus his story on Harlem gangs intensely on one individual and the small group around him. Sixteen-year-old Red Jackson was the leader of the Midtowners, one of the toughest gangs in New York. Having engaged Jackson's trust, Parks showed the complexity of their relationship in his pictures. In the now famous photograph, "Red Jackson, Harlem Gang Leader" (1948), Jackson is caught in a moment of reflection as he looks out of a broken tenement house window. In another, "Red Jackson and Herbie Levy Study Wounds on Face of Slain Gang Member Maurice Gaines" (1948), Jackson and a fellow gang member stare at the body of a friend in his coffin, the victim of a gang ramble.

Through these extraordinary images, Parks displays not just the violence of the gangs, but the complex humanity of its players and victims. He is able to go beyond the stereotypical feelings that most Americans of the time had about Harlem to reveal something poignant and universal about its people.

In 1950, he moved to Paris as a European correspondent, photographing for several years in France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Parks was given great access to celebrities, gaining their trust and shooting beautiful and touching portraits, including actress Ingrid Bergman; artists Alberto Giacometti, Alexander Calder, and Marcel Duchamp; socialite Gloria Vanderbilt; and musicians Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong.