Gordon Parks

Early life

Parks was born in Fort Scott, Kansas, the son of Andrew Jackson Parks and Sarah Ross, on November 30, 1912. He was the youngest of 15 children. His father was a farmer who grew corn, beets, turnips, potatoes, collard greens, and tomatoes. They also had a few ducks, chickens, and hogs.

He attended a segregated elementary school. Because the town was too small for segregated high schools, his high school was integrated. However, black students were not allowed to participate in sports or school social activities, and they were discouraged from developing aspirations for higher education. Parks related in a documentary on his life that his teacher told him his desire to go to college would be a waste of money.

When Parks was 11 years old, three white boys threw him into the Marmaton River believing he couldn't swim. He had the presence of mind to duck underwater so they wouldn't see him make it to land. His mother died when he was fourteen. He spent his last night at the family home sleeping beside his mother's coffin seeking not only solace, but a way to face his own fear of death.

Soon after, he was sent to St. Paul, Minnesota to live with his sister and her husband. He and his brother-in-law argued frequently, and Parks was finally turned out onto the street to fend for himself at the age of 15. Struggling to survive, he worked in brothels, and as a singer, piano player, bus boy, traveling waiter, and semi-pro basketball player. In 1929, he briefly worked in an elite gentlemen's club, the Minnesota Club. There he observed the trappings of success and was able to read many books from the club library. When the Wall Street Crash of 1929 brought an end to the club, he jumped a train to Chicago, where he managed to land a job in a flophouse.

Career

Photography

At the age of twenty-eight, Parks was struck by photographs of migrant workers in a magazine. He bought his first camera, a Voigtländer Brillant, for $12.50 at a Seattle, Washington pawnshop and taught himself how to take photos. The photography clerks who developed his first roll of film applauded his work and prompted him to seek a fashion assignment at a women's clothing store in St. Paul, Minnesota owned by Frank Murphy. Those photographs caught the eye of Marva Louis, wife of heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis. She encouraged Parks and his wife, Sally Alvis, to move to Chicago in 1940, where he began a portrait business and specialized in photographs of society women. Parks's photographic work in Chicago, especially in capturing the myriad experiences of African Americans across the city, led him to receive the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1942. The fellowship paid him $200 a month and offered him his choice of employer. This, in turn, contributed to being asked to join the Farm Security Administration (FSA) which was chronicling the nation's social conditions under the auspice of Roy Stryker.

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 FSA.

Working at the FSA as a trainee under Roy Stryker, Parks created one of his best-known photographs, American Gothic, Washington, D.C. Inspired and named after the iconic Grant Wood painting American Gothic, Parks' "haunting" photograph shows Ella Watson, a black woman who worked on the cleaning crew of the FSA building, standing stiffly in front of an American flag—a broom in one hand and a mop in the background. Parks was inspired to create the image after encountering racism repeatedly in restaurants and shops in the segregated capital city.

Upon viewing the photograph, Stryker said that it was an indictment of America, and that it could get all of his photographers fired. He urged Parks to keep working with Watson which led to a series of photographs of her daily life. Parks said later that his first image was overdone and not subtle; other commentators have argued that it drew strength from its polemical nature and its duality of victim and survivor, and thus affected far more people than his subsequent pictures of Mrs. Watson.

Film

In the 1950s, Parks worked as a consultant on various Hollywood productions. He later directed a series of documentaries on black ghetto life that were commissioned by National Educational Television. With his film adaptation of his semi-autobiographical novel, The Learning Tree, in 1969 for Warner Bros.-Seven Arts. It was filmed in his home town of Fort Scott, Kansas. Parks also wrote the screenplay and composed the musical score for the film, with assistance from his friend, the composer Henry Brant.

Shaft, a 1971 detective film directed by Parks and starring Richard Roundtree as John Shaft, became a major hit that spawned a series of films that would be labeled as blaxploitation. The blaxploitation genre was one in which images of lower-class blacks being involved with drugs, violence and women, were exploited for commercially successful films featuring black actors, and was popular with a section of the black community. Parks's 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 include The Super Cops (1974) and Leadbelly (1976), a biographical film of the blues musician Huddie Ledbetter. In the 1980s, he made several films for television and composed the music and a libretto for Martin, a ballet tribute to Martin Luther King Jr., which premiered in Washington, D.C., during 1989. It was screened on national television on King's birthday in 1990.

In 2000, as an homage, he had a cameo appearance in the Shaft sequel that starred Samuel L. Jackson in the title role as the namesake and nephew of the original John Shaft. In the cameo scene, Parks was sitting playing chess when Jackson greeted him as, "Mr. P."

Musician and composer

His first job was as a piano player in a brothel when he was a teenager. Parks also performed as a jazz pianist. His song "No Love", composed in another brothel, was performed during a national radio broadcast by Larry Funk and his orchestra in the early 1930s.

Parks composed Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1953) at the encouragement of black American conductor Dean Dixon and Dixon's wife Vivian, a pianist, and with the help of the composer Henry Brant. He completed Tree Symphony in 1967. In 1989, he composed and directed Martin, a ballet dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr., the civil-rights leader, who had been assassinated.

Writing

In the late-1940s, Parks began writing books on the art and craft of photography. This second career would produce 15 books and lead to his role as a prominent black filmmaker. His semi-autobiographical novel The Learning Tree was published in 1963. He authored several books of poetry, which he illustrated with his own photographs, and he wrote three volumes of memoirs: A Choice of Weapons (1966), Voices in the Mirror (1990), and A Hungry Heart (2005).

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's writing accomplishments include novels, poetry, autobiography, and non-fiction, including both photographic instructional manuals and books about filmmaking.

Painting

Parks's photography-related abstract oil paintings were showcased in a 1981 exhibition at Alex Rosenberg Gallery in New York titled "Gordon Parks: Expansions: The Aesthetic Blend of Painting and Photography."

Essence magazine

In 1970, Parks helped found Essence magazine, and served as its editorial director during the first three years of its circulation.

Personal life

Parks was married and divorced three times. His first two wives, comprising almost 40 years of marriage, were Black. He married Sally Alvis in Minneapolis in 1933 and they divorced in 1961, after more than 25 years. In 1962, he married Elizabeth Campbell, daughter of cartoonist E. Simms Campbell, and they divorced in 1973. Parks first met Chinese-American editor Genevieve Young (stepdaughter of Chinese diplomat Wellington Koo) in 1962 when he began writing The Learning Tree. At that time, his publisher assigned her to be his editor. They became romantically involved at a time when they both were divorcing previous spouses, and married in 1973. This was his shortest marriage, lasting only six years. After their divorce in 1979, Parks and Young remained close friends until his death in 2006. Parks was in a long-term relationship with Gloria Vanderbilt until his death in 2006.

Parks had four children by his first two wives: Gordon, Jr., David, Leslie, and Toni (Parks-Parsons). His oldest son Gordon Parks, Jr., whose talents resembled his father's, was killed in a plane crash in 1979 in Kenya, where he had gone to direct a film. David is an author, with his first book, GI Diary, published in 1968. The book is included in the Howard University Press Classic Editions, Library of African American Literature and Criticism.

Parks was a longtime resident of Greenburgh, New York in Westchester County, New York, and his house was landmarked in 2007.

Parks has five grandchildren: Alain, Gordon III, Sarah, Campbell, and Satchel. Malcolm X honored Parks when he asked him to be the godfather of his daughter, Qubilah Shabazz.

Legacy

In film

With his 1971 film Shaft (along with Melvin Van Peebles's Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, released earlier the same year), Parks co-created the genre of blaxploitation, an ethnic subgenre of the exploitation film that emerged in the United States during the early 1970s. The action film also helped to alter Hollywood's view of African Americans, introducing the black action hero into mainstream cinema.

Director Spike Lee cites Parks as an inspiration, stating "You get inspiration where it comes from. It doesn't have to be because I'm looking at his films. The odds that he got these films made under, when there were no black directors, is enough."

The Sesame Street character Gordon Robinson was named after Parks.

In music

One of Parks' photographs, 1956 Alabama, is used for the album cover of Common's Like Water for Chocolate. It is a photo of a young black woman in Alabama, dressed for church, and drinking from a "colored only" drinking fountain.

Parks is referenced in Kendrick Lamar's music video for his song "ELEMENT.". In the video, some of Parks's iconic photographs are transformed into moving vignettes.

Preservation and archives

Several parties are recipients or heirs of different parts of Parks's archival record.

The Gordon Parks Foundation

After his passing, Genevieve Young established the Gordon Parks Foundation in Pleasantville, New York (formerly in Chappaqua, New York) reports that it "permanently preserves the work of Gordon Parks, makes it available to the public through exhibitions, books, and electronic media." The organization also says it "supports artistic and educational activities that advance what Gordon described as 'the common search for a better life and a better world.'" That support includes scholarships for "artistic" students, and assistance to researchers. Their headquarters includes an exhibition space with rotating photography exhibits, open free to the public, with guided group tours available by arrangement. The foundation admits "qualified researchers" to their archive, by appointment. The foundation collaborates with other organizations and institutions, nationally and internationally, to advance its aims.

The Gordon Parks Museum/Center

The Gordon Parks Museum/Center in Fort Scott, Kansas, holds dozens of Parks's photos and various belongings, both given to the museum by Parks, and bequeathed to the museum by him upon his death. The collection includes "awards and medals, personal photos, paintings and drawings of Gordon, plaques, certificates, diplomas and honorary doctorates, selected books and articles, clothing, record player, tennis racket, magazine articles, his collection of Life magazines and much more." The museum has also separately received some of Parks's cameras, writing desk and photos of him.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

The Library of Congress (LOC) reports that, in 1995, it "acquired Parks' personal collection, including papers, music, photographs, films, recordings, drawings and other products of his... career."

The LOC was already home to a federal archive that included Parks's first major photojournalism projects—photographs he produced for the Farm Security Administration (1942–43), and for the Office of War Information (1943–45).

Exhibitions

1984: The Photographs of Gordon Parks, Minnesota Museum of American Art, Landmark Center Galleries, St. Paul, Minnesota

1997: Half past autumn : a retrospective Gordon Parks, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. A career retrospective.

2013: Gordon Parks: The Making of an Argument, New Orleans Museum of Art.

2015: Gordon Parks: Back to Fort Scott, Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

2015: Gordon Parks: Segregation Story, High Museum of Art, Atlanta.

2016: Invisible Man: Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison in Harlem, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.

2017: Gordon Parks: camera is my weapon, Zachęta Gallery, Warsaw, Poland.

2018: Gordon Parks: The Flavio Story, Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto, Ontario and the Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

2019: Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940-1950, organized by National Gallery of Art in collaboration with The Gordon Parks Foundation, traveled to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas and Addison Gallery of American Art.

2020: Gordon Parks X Muhammad Ali, The Image of a Champion, 1966/1970, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Comprising photographs from two Life magazine assignments.

2020: A Choice of Weapons Honor and Dignity: The Visions of Gordon Parks and Jamel Shabazz, Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, Minnesota.

2021: "The Impact of Gordon Parks," multiple Parks films (including Leadbelly) screened and retrospective panel, Tallgrass Film Festival, Wichita, Kansas

Collections

Work by Parks is held in the following public collections:

Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Cleveland Museum of Art

Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, Minnesota

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Untitled, Harlem, New York. Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida

Awards and honors

Parks received more than 20 honorary doctorates in his lifetime.

1941: Awarded a fellowship for photography from the Rosenwald Fund. The fellowship allowed him to work with the Farm Security Administration.

1961: Named "Magazine Photographer of the Year" (1960) by the American Society of Magazine Photographers.

1970: Kansas State University awarded Parks the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters.

1972: The NAACP awarded Parks the Spingarn Medal.

1973: Kansas State University hosted a week-long "Gordon Parks Festival", November 4–11.

1976: Honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Thiel College, a private, liberal arts college in Greenville, Pennsylvania

1989: The United States Library of Congress selects The Learning Tree as one of the first 25 films chosen for permanent preservation as part of the National Film Registry, deeming it to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" in part due to its being the first film directed by an African American to be financed by a major Hollywood studio.

1990: Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism, Missouri School of Journalism, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri

1998: Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Lifetime Achievement

1999: Gordon Parks Elementary School, a nonprofit, K-5 grade public charter school in Kansas City, Missouri, was established to educate the urban-core inhabitants.

Works

Books

Flash Photography (1947)

Camera Portraits: Techniques and Principles of Documentary Portraiture (1948) (documentary)

The Learning Tree (1964) (semi-autobiographical)

A Choice of Weapons (1967) (autobiographical)

Born Black (1970) (compilation of essays and photographs)

Flavio (1978)

To Smile in Autumn (1979) (autobiographical)

New edition with foreword by Alexs D. Pate. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009

Voices in the Mirror, New York: Doubleday (1990) (autobiographical)

The Sun Stalker (2003) (biography on J. M. W. Turner)

A Hungry Heart (2005) (autobiographical)

Gordon Parks: Collected Works (2012), Göttingen, Germany: Steidl; Slp Edition, ISBN 978-3869305301

The New Tide: Early Work 1940–1950 (2018), Göttingen, Germany: Steidl

Poetry

Half Past Autumn: A Retrospective, memoir excerpts by Gordon Parks. Bulfinch Press/Little, Brown (1997), ISBN 0-8212-2298-8

A Star for Noon – An Homage to Women in Images Poetry and Music Bulfinch. (2000), ISBN 978-0821226858

Eyes With Winged Thoughts Atria Books (2005) ASIN B001EYHY00

Photography

Arias of Silence (1994) Bulfinch Press, ISBN 978-0821221204

Glimpses Towards Infinity. Bulfinch Press (1996), ISBN 978-0821222973

A Harlem Family 1967. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl (2012), ISBN 978-3-86930-602-5

Gordon Parks: a Poet and His Camera by Gordon Park, Viking Press (1968), ISBN 978-0233961088

The Atmosphere of Crime, 1957. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl (2020), ISBN 978-3-95829-696-1

Films

Flavio (1964) (short)

The World of Piri Thomas (1968)

The Learning Tree (1969)

Shaft (1971)

Shaft's Big Score! (1972)

The Super Cops (1974)

Leadbelly (1976)

Solomon Northup's Odyssey (1984)

Moments Without Proper Names (1987)

Parks also wrote Diary of a Harlem Family (1968) for Joseph Filipowic, and appeared in the 2000 remake of Shaft as Lenox Lounge Patron / Mr. P.

Music

Shaft's Big Score (1972)

Moments Without Proper Names (1987)

Martin (1989) (ballet about Martin Luther King Jr.)

Publications about Parks

Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr., Philip Brookman (eds), Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940–1950. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. and Steidl, 2018, ISBN 9783958294943

Paul Roth and Amanda Maddox (eds),Gordon Parks: The Flavio Story. Gordon Parks Foundation and Steidl, 2017, ISBN 978-3-95829-344-1

Michal Raz-Russo and Jean-Christophe Cloutier, et al., Invisible Man: Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison. Art Institute of Chicago and Steidl, 2016, ISBN 978-3-95829-109-6

Peter Kunhardt, Jr. and Felix Hoffmann (eds), I Am You: Selected Works, 1942–1978. C/O Berlin, Gordon Parks Foundation and Steidl, 2016, ISBN 978-3-95829-248-2

Karen Haas, Gordon Parks: Back to Fort Scott. Steidl, 2015, ISBN 978-3-86930-918-7

Brett Abbott, et al., Gordon Parks: Segregation Story. High Museum of Art, Atlanta and Steidl, 2014, ISBN 978-3-86930-801-2

Russell Lord, Gordon Parks: The Making of an Argument. Steidl, 2013, ISBN 978-3-86930-721-3

Peter Kunhardt, Jr. and Paul Roth (eds), Gordon Parks: Collected Works. Gordon Parks Foundation and Steidl, 2012, ISBN 978-3-86930-530-1

Berry, S. L. Gordon Parks. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1990, ISBN 1-55546-604-4

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, 1993, ISBN 0-87067-595-8

Documentaries on or including Parks

My Father, Gordon Parks (1969) (National Archives item #306.08063A)

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)

A Great Day in Hip-Hop (2000)

BaadAsssss Cinema (2002)

Soul Man: Isaac Hayes (2003)

Unstoppable: Conversation with Melvin Van Peebles, Gordon Parks, and Ossie Davis (2005)

Documenting the Face of America: Roy Stryker & the FSA Photographers (2008)

A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks (2021)