Half Past Autumn

Afterimage, March-April, 2003 by Bruno Chalifour

Half Past Autumn

The Photography of Gordon Parks.

George Eastman House,

Rochester, NY.

February 1 - April 6, 2003.

How can anyone summarize any artist's life in 199 photographs? Such a goal sounds all the more difficult to meet when the considered body of work spans 70 years. Such a retrospective becomes even more challenging in the case of Gordon Parks who has been in turns and simultaneously a photographer, a musician, a composer, a poet, a novelist, an essayist and a film director. The trouble for a curator is that Mr. Parks has succeeded in every field in which he has ventured; it is also to know that every one of his achievements informed the others. Documentary and socially involved photography, from the images for the Farm Security Administration to the photo-essays published in Life, fashion photographs and the portraits of celebrities, inspired and were inspired by Parks's poems, writings and films. The public visiting the George Eastman House discovers the life work of a genuine Renaissance man whose wisdom and sensitivity pervade every single image of the show. From the beginning Parks had to struggle hard to c ompete with the best; he also had a handicap in a world of photography almost entirely white in that he was black. As such he stands as a model and an exception. As such he has also always been on the side of the underprivileged who found in him a sensitive ear and a keen eye. From the very beginning he made the pledge to use his camera as "a weapon against poverty and racism." No wonder Parks's is at his strongest in his reportage work. Such images as An American Gothic and Ella and Grandchildren (1942), or The Fontanelle Family at Poverty Board (1967) stand as true icons of the African American condition and would unfortunately still stand true today. Of this work and the retrospective, Marianne Fulton, George Eastman House Senior Scholar and author of Eyes of Time: Photojournalism in America (Bulfinch,1989), wrote: "Some of the greatest photographs LIFE magazine ever published were images by Gordon Parks. His art is about pressing social and cultural issues, but it's always strengthened by his quest for the humanity he believes exists in all of us. Half Past Autumn brings us closer to the loving, creative person who is Gordon Parks."

Little time after working for the Farm Security Administration and in spite of prejudice in the fashion world, Parks worked for Vogue for five years. His style seems to follow in the steps of the great masters of the genre, such as Irving Penn, too closely sometimes. In the nineties Parks turned his camera toward still-life, landscapes of dreams where he could combine poetry and photography. Keeping up with the times, he had them printed on watercolor paper using ink-jet technology around 1995. These painterly pieces conclude the show at the George Eastman House, a show in its very last venue after touring the country since 1998.

"I have traveled this road so long that Perhaps I have helped to shape its course."

"The Road", A Poet and His Camera (Viking, 1968).