Gordon Parks Celebrating black history month

Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks (November 30, March ) Gordon Parks was a groundbreaking American photographer, musician, poet, novelist, journalist, activist and film director. He is best remembered for his photo essays for Life magazine and as the director of the 1971 film Shaft. He was the first African-American to work as a staff photographer for Life magazine and the first black artist to produce and direct a major Hollywood film, "The Learning Tree," in (nytimes.com/wikipedia)

Gordon Parks He rose from poverty to become one of the most important photojournalists and fashion photographers of the twentieth century. He opened doors through which many African-American photographers later passed. Ella Watson was a cleaning woman in a federal office building, in Washington, DC, whose wages supported a household that included grandchildren and an adopted daughter and helped support the church to which she was so devoted. We would never have heard of Ella Watson, if Parks hadn’t made that photo. He had come to Washington DC to work as a photographer for the Farm Security Administration [FSA]. Roy Stryker, who headed the photographic section, wasn’t happy about hiring a black photographer, but, after some prodding, did it anyway. To his credit, it was Stryker who suggested that Parks talk to Watson, when he expressed his desire to find a way to explore racial discrimination visually. The result was a series of photographs that looked at Watson’s life, at work and at home. She emerges, in those photos, as someone whose memory should be honored. Perhaps his best-known photograph, which he titled "American Gothic," was taken during his brief time with the agency; it shows a black cleaning woman named Ella Watson standing stiffly in front of an American flag, a mop in one hand and a broom in the other. Parks wanted the picture to speak to the existence of racial bigotry and inequality in the nation's capital. He was in an angry mood when he asked the woman to pose, having earlier been refused service at a clothing store, a movie theater and a restaurant. (nytimes.com/wikipedia) Ella Watson, 1942 by Gordon Parks

It is said Parks’ success as a photographer was largely due to his persistence and persuasiveness in pursuing his subjects, whether they were film stars and socialites or an impoverished slum child in Brazil. Parks’ years as a contributor to Life, the largest-circulation picture magazine of its day, lasted from 1948 to 1972, and it cemented his reputation as a humanitarian photojournalist and as an artist with an eye for elegance. He specialized in subjects relating to racism, poverty and black urban life, but he also took exemplary pictures of Paris fashions, celebrities and politicians. (

Flavio Da Silva In 1961, Parks did a series for LIFE on the slums of Brazil and found himself in what he describes as "dead center in the worst poverty I have ever encountered, in the favela of Catacumba, a desolate mountainside outside of Rio de Janeiro.” In true Parks fashion, instead of giving a broad view without much depth, he focused on an individual affected by the larger story, just as he had done with Red Jackson, from the Harlem gang series. At just 12, Flavio da Silva was already dying, from tuberculosis. Flavio lived with his parents, brothers and sisters in a one-room shack. The images Parks created while living with the da Silva family illustrated the family's reliance on their dying son. "What Flavio cared most about," says Parks, "was that his younger brothers and sisters were taken care of. It was very noble of him.... I definitely learned more from Flavio about character than Flavio learned from me."After the story ran, LIFE readers contributed money to help with Flavio's medical care. Parks says that people sent in roughly $30,000 to bring Flavio to America. "I went back to Brazil and the doctors told me that Flavio would die on my hands if I took him to America. I took him anyway and after living there for two years, he was cured." When Flavio went back home to Brazil, Parks bought Flavio's father a new truck with the money everyone had sent in, and then LIFE donated $25,000 so that Parks could help the family buy a new home. Recently, Parks went back to Brazil to visit Flavio for an upcoming special HBO is doing on the photographer in November Flavio is now close to 49 years old and has two young sons, a daughter and a grandchild. "Flavio's very gracious," Parks concludes. "He doesn't beg for help or anything. He gave me a beautiful Bible when I went back to see him...he wants me to keep it for the rest of my life, which I will.” (pdngallery.com/legends/parks)

“ I suffered evils, but without allowing them to rob me of the freedom to expand. ” Gordon Parks

“ The subject matter is so much more important than the photographer … The photographer begins to feel big and bloated and so big he can't walk through one of these doors because he gets a good byline; he gets notices all over the world and so forth; but they're really - the important people are the people he photographs. ” - Gordon Parks

“ There's another horizon out there, one more horizon that you have to make for yourself and let other people discover it, and someone else will take it further on, you know. ” Gordon Parks The End