Gordon Parks

Overview
Image of Gordon Parks's Doll Test, Harlem New York

Gordon Parks (b. 1912, Fort Scott, KS, d. 2006, New York, NY) was one of the seminal figures of twentieth century photography.  A humanitarian with a deep commitment to social justice, he left behind a body of work that documents many of the most important aspects of American culture from the early 1940s up until his death in 2006, with a focus on race relations, poverty, civil rights, and urban life.  In addition, Parks was also a celebrated composer, author and filmmaker who interacted with many of the most prominent people of his era- from politicians and artists to celebrities and athletes.

 

Parks was born into poverty in Fort Scott, Kansas in 1912, the youngest of fifteen children. He worked several odd jobs until he bought a camera at a Pawn Shop in 1937 in Seattle and was hired to photograph fashion at a department store in Minneapolis. In 1942 Parks received a photography fellowship from the Farm Security Administration, succeeding Dorothea Lange among others. While at the F.S.A., Parks created American Gothic, now known as one of his signature images, in which he shows Ella Watson, a cleaning women, holding a mop and broom, standing in front of an American flag. The image makes a poignant commentary on social injustice whilst referencing Grant Wood’s celebrated painting American Gothic which it is also named after. He became a freelance photographer working for Vogue as well as publishing two books, Flash Photography (1947) and Camera Portraits: Techniques and Principles of Documentary Portraiture (1948). In 1948 Parks was hired by Life magazine to do a photographic essay on Harlem gang leader, Red Jackson, which led to a permanent position at Life, where he worked for twenty years. Parks developed his skills as a composer and author and in 1969 he became the first African American to direct a major motion picture, The Learning Tree, based on his best-selling novel and in 1971 he directed Shaft. A true Renaissance man, Gordon Parks passed away in 2006.

Works
Biography
Image of Gordon Parks's Doll Test, Harlem New York

Gordon Parks (b. 1912, Fort Scott, KS, d. 2006, New York, NY) was one of the seminal figures of twentieth century photography.  A humanitarian with a deep commitment to social justice, he left behind a body of work that documents many of the most important aspects of American culture from the early 1940s up until his death in 2006, with a focus on race relations, poverty, civil rights, and urban life.  In addition, Parks was also a celebrated composer, author and filmmaker who interacted with many of the most prominent people of his ear- from politicians and artists to celebrities and athletes.

 

Parks was born into poverty in Fort Scott, Kansas in 1912, the youngest of fifteen children. He worked several odd jobs until he bought a camera at a Pawn Shop in 1937 in Seattle and was hired to photograph fashion at a department store in Minneapolis. In 1942 Parks received a photography fellowship from the Farm Security Administration, succeeding Dorothea Lange among others. While at the F.S.A., Parks created American Gothic, now known as one of his signature images, in which he shows Ella Watson, a cleaning women, holding a mop and broom, standing in front of an American flag. The image makes a poignant commentary on social injustice whilst referencing Grant Wood’s celebrated painting American Gothic which it is also named after. He became a freelance photographer working for Vogue as well as publishing two books, Flash Photography (1947) and Camera Portraits: Techniques and Principles of Documentary Portraiture (1948). In 1948 Parks was hired by Life magazine to do a photographic essay on Harlem gang leader, Red Jackson, which led to a permanent position at Life, where he worked for twenty years. Parks developed his skills as a composer and author and in 1969 he became the first African American to direct a major motion picture, The Learning Tree, based on his best-selling novel and in 1971 he directed Shaft. A true Renaissance man, Gordon Parks passed away in 2006.

 

Gordon Parks’ I AM YOU is a limited-edition portfolio of 12 little-known works from the Civil Rights Era. As the world reacts to upheavals in global politics, Parks’ civil rights photo essays are especially relevant.  Parks work captures the turmoil, unrest, and the human emotion of another tumultuous time in world history.  The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s was a reaction to political and cultural divides, and the present provides striking similarities.  The current struggles in the U.S. and through the world for racial equality, freedom of religion, open immigration, women’s right and LGBTQ equality echo the activism portrayed in Parks’ photographs.

 

Parks currently has solo exhibitions at the J. Paul Getty Museum (The Flavio Story), the Amon Carter Museum of American Art (The New Tide, Early Work 1940-1950, which travelled from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C), and an upcoming solo exhibition at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Gordon Parks X Muhammad Ali, The Image of a Champion 1966/1970).  Recently, Gordon Parks: I Am You, Selected Works 1942-1978 was exhibited at Fotografiemuseum, with additional solo exhibitions at C/O Berlin, Kunstfoyer Munich, and a selection of American Museums over the next three years. Parks is in major museum collections around the globe including MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the J. Paul Getty Museum. 

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