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Gordon Parks — news, coverage & facts — IJR

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.

(Parks's overall body of work for the federal government—using his camera "as a weapon"—would draw far more attention from contemporaries and historians than that of all other black photographers in federal service at the time. Today, most historians reviewing federally commissioned black photographers of that era focus almost exclusively on Parks.)

After the FSA disbanded, Parks remained in Washington, D.C. as a correspondent with the Office of War Information where he photographed the all-black 332d Fighter Group known as the Tuskegee Airmen. He was unable to follow the group in the overseas war theatre, so he resigned from the O.W.I. He would later follow Stryker to the Standard Oil Photography Project in New Jersey, which assigned photographers to take pictures of small towns and industrial centers. The most striking work by Parks during that 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); Self Portrait (1945); and Ferry Commuters, Staten Island, N.Y. (1946).

Parks renewed his search for photography jobs in the fashion world. Following his resignation from the Office of War Information, Parks moved to Harlem and became a freelance fashion photographer for Vogue under the editorship of Alexander Liberman. Despite racist attitudes of the day, Vogue editor Liberman hired him to shoot a collection of evening gowns. As Parks photographed fashion for Vogue over the next few years, he developed the distinctive style of photographing his models in motion rather than in static poses. During this time, he published his first two books, Flash Photography (1947) and Camera Portraits: Techniques and Principles of Documentary Portraiture (1948).

A 1948 photographic essay on a young Harlem gang leader won Parks a staff job as a photographer and writer with America's leading photo-magazine, Life. His involvement with Life would last until 1972. For over 20 years, Parks produced photographs on subjects including fashion, sports, Broadway, poverty, and racial segregation, as well as portraits of Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Muhammad Ali, and Barbra Streisand. He became "one of the most provocative and celebrated photojournalists in the United States."

His photographs for Life magazine, namely his 1956 photo essay, titled "The Restraints: Open and Hidden," illuminated the effects of racial segregation while simultaneously following the everyday lives and activities of three families in and near Mobile, Alabama: the Thorntons, Causeys, and Tanners. As curators at the High Museum of Art Atlanta note, while the photo essay by Parks served as decisive documentation of the Jim Crow South and all of its effects, he did not simply focus on demonstrations, boycotts, and brutality that were associated with that period; instead, he "emphasized the prosaic details" of the lives of several families.

An exhibition of photographs from a 1950 project Parks completed for Life was exhibited in 2015 at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Parks returned to his hometown, Fort Scott, Kansas, where segregation persisted, and he documented conditions in the community and the contemporary lives of many of his 11 classmates from the segregated middle school they attended. The project included his commentary, but the work was never published by Life.

During his years with Life, Parks also wrote a few books on the subject of photography (particularly documentary photography), and in 1960 was named Photographer of the Year by the American Society of Magazine Photographers.

His fashion photography continued to be published in Vogue from the mid-1940s to the late 1970s.

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).

In April 2000, the LOC awarded Parks its accolade "Living Legend", one of only 26 writers and artists so honored by the LOC. The LOC also holds Parks's published and unpublished scores, and several of his films and television productions.

National Film Registry

Parks's autobiographical motion picture, The Learning Tree, and his African-American anti-hero action-drama Shaft, are both permanently preserved as part of the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. The Learning Tree was one of the original group of 25 films first selected by the LOC for the National Film Registry.

National Archives, Washington, D.C.

The National Archives hold the film My Father, Gordon Parks (1969: archive 306.8063), a film about Parks and his production of his autobiographical motion picture, The Learning Tree, along with a print (from the original) of Solomon Northup's Odyssey, a film made by Parks for a Public Broadcasting System telecast about the ordeal of a slave. The Archives also hold various photos from Parks's years in government service.

Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

The Smithsonian Institution has an extensive list of holdings related to Parks, particularly photos.

Wichita State University

In 1991, Wichita State University (WSU), in Wichita, the largest city in Parks's home state of Kansas, awarded him its highest honor for achievement: the President's Medal. However, in the mid-1990s, after Parks entrusted WSU with a collection of 150 of his famous photos, WSU—for various reasons (including confusion as to whether they were a gift or loan, and whether the university could adequately protect and preserve them)—returned them, stunning and deeply upsetting Parks. A further snub came from Wichita's city officials, who also declined the opportunity to acquire many of his papers and photos.

By 2000, however, WSU and Parks had healed their division. The university resumed honoring Parks and accumulating his work. In 2008, the Gordon Parks Foundation selected WSU as repository for 140 boxes of his photos, manuscripts, letters and other papers. In 2014, another 125 of his photos were acquired from the foundation by WSU, with help from Wichita philanthropists Paula and Barry Downing, for display at the university's Ulrich Museum of Art.

Kansas State University

The Gordon Parks Collection in the Richard L. D. and Marjorie J. Morse Department Special Collections at Kansas State University primarily documents the creation of his film The Learning Tree. The Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art at Kansas State University holds a collection of 204 Gordon Parks photographs as well as artist files and artwork documentation. This collection is made up of 128 photographs that were chosen and gifted by Parks in 1973 to K-State, after receiving an honorary doctor of letters degree from the university in 1970. The gift included black and white images printed from negatives made between 1949 and 1970 and stored in the LIFE magazine archives; the donation also included color photographs printed from negatives in the artist's private collection. The K-State gift is the first known set of photographs specifically selected by Parks for a public institution. The collection also includes a group of 73 photographs printed after two residences by Parks in Manhattan, Kansas. Parks first returned for a residency in 1984, sponsored by the local newspaper The Manhattan Mercury for its centennial; he returned for another in 1985, initiated by the Manhattan Arts Council and sponsored by the city and various community organizations and individuals. Seventy-three photographs printed after these visits were transferred from the Manhattan Arts Center to K-State in 2017. The photographs are of locations in and around Manhattan, including churches and historic homes and K-State architecture and students.

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.

2000: The Congress of Racial Equality Lifetime Achievement Award.

2000: Library of Congress selects Parks's film Shaft for National Film Registry preservation—deeming it to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant"

2000 (April): Library of Congress awards Parks its accolade "Living Legend"—honoring "artists, writers, activists, filmmakers, physicians, entertainers, sports figures and public servants who have made significant contributions to America's diverse cultural, scientific and social heritage"—one 26 writers and artists so honored by the LOC.

2001: Kitty Carlisle Hart Award, Arts & Business Council, New York

2003: Royal Photographic Society's Special 150th Anniversary Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS) in recognition of a sustained, significant contribution to the art of photography.

2002: Jackie Robinson Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award.

2002: Inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum.

2004: The Art Institute of Boston awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.

2008: An alternative learning center in Saint Paul, Minnesota, renamed their school Gordon Parks High School after receiving a new building

2021: The Gordon Parks Award for Black Excellence in Filmmaking, Tallgrass Film Festival, Wichita, Kansas, instituted in Parks' honor.

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