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Conferences
NANPA's Seventh Annual Summit
Odyssey 2001
Las Vegas, Nevada
A Lifetime of Photography:
A
Conversation with Gordon Parks
 Gordon
Parks
There are very few people to
whom the term "Renaissance Man" could justifiably be applied. Without
question, Gordon Parks is one of them.
A native of Kansas, Parks is
a photographer, author, poet, composer, pianist and pioneer film director.
His photojournalist images serve as distinct markers in American history;
among them are haunting images of gang warfare in Harlem and turbulent
Black Panther meetings. Yet he also photographed fashion for Vogue and
Glamour, and has made recent colorful landscapes and still lifes that
juxtapose color, light and shape. "I have loved all of the various aspects
of photography," Parks says. "They've kept me alive and in pursuit of
something special."
As Parks tells it, he took
up photography in the late 1930s after he found a magazine left behind
by a passenger on a train. A portfolio inside the magazine, documenting
the terrible living conditions of migrant workers, inspired him to buy
his first camera, a Voightlander Brilliant, at a pawnshop in Seattle.
"I bought what was to become my weapon against poverty and racism," he
says.
In 1942, he became the first
photographer to receive a fellowship from the Julius Rosenwald Foundation
and chose to work with Roy Stryker at the photography section of the Farm
Security Administration (FSA), a government agency set up to call attention
to the plight of the needy during the Depression. It was there where Parks
took his first professional photograph, which he called "American Gothic."
"I …asked Ella [Watson] to stand before the American flag hanging from
floor to ceiling, placed the mop in her one hand, a broom in the other,
then instructed her to look into the lens." It became his signature image.
From 1949 until 1969, he worked
as a Life photographer, producing 300 articles on a wide variety of subjects,
including stories on social injustice, gang violence, and poverty in the
U.S., Brazil and Portugal. He was a founder and editorial director of
Essence magazine in the early 1970s.
His film career began in the
1960s with two documentaries, which he also photographed for Life. In
1969 he produced, directed and wrote the screenplay and the musical score
for The Learning Tree, based on his early life in Kansas. He then directed
and wrote the classic score for Shaft, which became a huge success in
1971. Many other films have followed, along with sonatas, a symphony,
a ballet and concertos. As an author and poet, he has published numerous
books, many of them integrating his photography.
Among the many awards he has
received, Parks is proudest of the NAACP's highest award, the Spingarn
Medal, and the Governor's Medal of Merit, struck especially for him as
Kansan of the Year in 1985. He has received 46 honorary degrees and schools
and media centers have been named after him. At age 88, he continues to
photograph, write, compose, paint and publish. A retrospective exhibition
of his work is presently on tour in the U.S., and a documentary of his
life is scheduled to air in November on HBO.
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