Gordon Parks

Learning through pictures

Gordon Parks grew up in Fort Scott amid poverty and segregation. The town remained a source of memory and subject matter throughout his life.

As a railway dining-car waiter, he encountered magazine photographs that helped draw him towards documentary work.

He taught himself to use a camera. A 1942 Rosenwald Fellowship led to work with the FSA and then the Office of War Information. In 1944 he moved to Standard Oil’s documentary project while also developing magazine and fashion work.

Learning from pictures did not mean repeating a single model. His career would bring different visual conventions to different audiences, from a fashion client to a reader confronting social inequality.

Sources for this section: [3] · [2] · [1]

The magazine as a major working space

A 1948 Harlem gang-leader essay helped secure his place as Life’s first African American staff photographer. During two decades there he covered civil rights, poverty, fashion and entertainment.

In 1963 he published the autobiographical novel The Learning Tree, returning to the Kansas childhood that continued to shape his work.

The assignment and the publication were institutional settings as well as personal achievements. The story a reader encountered depended on selection, captions, layout and editorial priorities, not simply the total material a photographer made.

Sources for this section: [1] · [3]

Working across media

For the 1969 film of The Learning Tree, Parks is credited as director, producer, screenwriter and composer. Burnett Guffey is credited for cinematography and George R. Rohrs for editing.

Shaft followed in 1971. Parks also continued writing and composing; his 1989 ballet Martin honoured Martin Luther King Jr. He remained active into his later years and died in 2006.

Maurice Berger interprets The Learning Tree as a project that sought to challenge racial stereotypes and reach different audiences.

These overlapping roles show range while leaving room for collaborators. A director’s photographic background does not make a film a solitary act of camera work; its image, performance, editing and sound are made through related responsibilities.

Sources for this section: [4] · [1] · [5]