Gordon Parks
Parks, Gordon
Gordon Alexander Buchanan Parks
<p>In a career that spanned over 50 years, photographer, filmmaker, musician, and author Gordon Parks created an iconic body of work that documented American life and culture, with a focus on social justice, the civil rights movement, and the African American experience.</p><p>Born in Fort Scott, Kansas, Parks relocated to St. Paul, Minnesota, as a teenager and began taking fashion photographs for a local clothing store. In 1940, he moved to the South Side of Chicago, where he had a portrait studio at the South Side Community Art Center. A portfolio of images taken in Chicago earned him a prestigious Julius Rosenwald Fund fellowship—the first of the foundation’s grants for African American artists to be awarded to a photographer. In his 1942 application, Parks stated his aim to “sympathetically portray the Negro in his intellectual, professional, educational, social, farm and urban life, constituting thereby, not one strata [<em>sic</em>] of society, but rather a record showing all sides of the life of our people.” That approach would remain a hallmark of his magazine work, his service to the U.S. government, and his later projects in photography and film.&nbsp;</p><p>The Rosenwald award enabled Parks to move to Washington, D.C., for an apprenticeship with the Farm Security Administration. He later became a correspondent for the Office of War Information (OWI). By 1944 he had relocated to New York City, where he was a freelance photographer for publications such as <em>Vogue </em>and <em>Glamour</em>—work that drew attention to him in these almost exclusively white environments. In 1948 Parks worked with author Ralph Ellison on the first of <a href="https://www.artic.edu/exhibitions/2405/invisible-man-gordon-parks-and-ralph-ellison-in-harlem" target="_blank">two collaborations</a>, an unpublished essay titled “Harlem is Nowhere.” That project led him to approach <em>Life</em> picture editor Wilson Hicks with a story about Red Jackson, a young black man who led a gang known as the Midtowners. On November 1, 1948 “Harlem Gang Leader” was published in <em>Life</em> and earned Parks a position as staff photographer that he held until the early 1970s. He was the first African American hired by the magazine.</p><p>Parks completed several groundbreaking assignments for <em>Life </em>that offered some of the most important documentation of&nbsp;race relations and the civil rights movement. He returned to Chicago twice on such assignments—in 1953 for a never-published story on the <a href="https://www.artic.edu/artworks/223911/pastor-ledbetter-chicago-illinois" target="_blank">Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church</a>, and in 1963 to document the <a href="https://www.artic.edu/artworks/223904/untitled" target="_blank">Black Muslim movement</a>, which was newly headquartered in the city.&nbsp;In 1953, Parks also had a solo exhibition at the Art Institute, which featured 51 of his photographs.</p><p>Parks’s career extended beyond photography to encompass filmmaking, music, and writing. In 1969 he became the first African American to write and direct a major feature film, <em>The Learning Tree</em>, based on his semi-autobiographical novel. His next directorial endeavor, <em>Shaft</em> (1971) remains an icon of blaxploitation films. Parks continued photographing, publishing, and composing until his death in 2006.&nbsp;</p><p>At the Art Institute, his work has been featured in the 2016 exhibition <a href="https://www.artic.edu/exhibitions/2405/invisible-man-gordon-parks-and-ralph-ellison-in-harlem" target="_blank"><em>Invisible Man: Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison in Harlem</em></a>, which featured Parks’s collaborations with acclaimed author Ralph Ellison, and the 2018 exhibition <a href="https://www.artic.edu/exhibitions/2749/never-a-lovely-so-real-photography-and-film-in-chicago-1950-1980" target="_blank"><em>Never a Lovely So Real: Photography and Film in Chicago, 1950–1980</em></a>.</p>
Gordon Parks
American, 1912–2006 Gordon Parks
American, 1912-2006