If you ’re a 1970s movie buff , you might recognize Gordon Parks as the director of"Shaft,“the 1971 drama in whichRichard Roundtreeplayed a bad but suave secret eye who was Hollywood ’s first Black action at law hero .
But long before he sit in a director ’s chair , Parks had another , even more influential artistic vocation as adocumentary photographerand photojournalist , one whose study often show the shabbiness and squalor of a still - segregatednation , and raise ordinary hard - forge multitude to expansive status .
Perhaps his most iconic image is " American Gothic , " a 1942 portrayal of a woman named Ella Watson who supported herself and her two grandchildren by clean offices at the Farm Security Administration ( FSA ) in Washington , D.C. , where Parks figure out as a photographer before going on to fame at Life magazine . ( Parks also tookthese photosof Watson and her family at home . )
" I choose my television camera as a arm against all the things I dislike about America — poorness , racialism , discrimination , " Parks explained in his 1960s memoir , " A Choice of weapon . " A documentary titled " A Choice of Weapons : inspire by Gordon Parks , " exploring Parks ' endure bequest , debuted Monday , Nov. 15 , 2021 , on HBO and HBO Max .
Now , 110 years after his nativity in 1912 , the resurgence of interest in Parks ' work is also on full exhibit in an expo at theCarnegie Museum of Artin Pittsburgh of Parks ' pic of industrial workers at a long - vanish grease plant in the mid-1940s .
The range of a function on display in " Gordon Parks in Pittsburgh , 1944/46 , " which go through Aug. 7 , 2022 , show Parks ' distinctive manner of using carefully staged and composed still exposure as a storytelling equipment , and his ability to convey the struggle and resilience of man who spend their days perform grueling Job in a filthy , unsafe setting .
Who Was Gordon Parks?
Parks was hold Nov. 30 , 1912 , and grew up in Fort Scott , Kansas , where he take to quash white vicinity after wickedness , to sit in the peanut heading in the town movie theater and to die hard vilification and casual beatings from white strong-armer . " These indignities come so often that I began to accept them as normal , " he after wrote in his memoir .
He left at years 16 to live in St. Paul , Minnesota , where he worked bussing tables at a diner while making a name for himself as a role player on a local hoops team , the Diplomats . In 1937 , while working as a server on a passenger train , he saw magazines that featured photographer ' delineation of theGreat Depression , includingDorothea Lange ’s photosof migratory workers in California . He was come to by the power that a good picture conveyed and resolve to become a lensman himself .
" I buy a book about picture taking and read it on the run to St. Paul and Seattle , " Parkstold film critic Roger Ebert in 1972.“When I got to Seattle I had some wage coming and I run to a pawnbroker’s shop and buy my first camera . " The first photos he took were of seagulls .
" What ’s really interesting about Parks is that he was whole self - train as a lensman , " explainsDan Leers , Carnegie ’s conservator of photography , in a Zoom consultation . When Parks corrupt a camera , he know so little about how to go it that he had to have the pawnshop possessor show him how to load the film , according to Leers . " 10 or 15 years afterwards , he ’s become such a master with the television camera that he ’s really publishing manual on how to do winkle picture taking . "
Parks finally found work as a manner lensman , shooting subjects that admit style architect and socialiteMarva Trotter Louis , the wife of boxing champion Joe Louis . After he won aJulius Rosenwald Fellowshipin 1942 , the ill fame led to Parks being engage byRoy Stryker , founder of the picture taking program of the FSA in Washington , D.C. Though an economist , Stryker understood the power of photographs in carry Congress members to supportNew Deallegislation . He later work for Stryker at the Office of War Information as well .
The Standard Oil Penola Grease Plant Photos
In 1944 , Stryker , who had move on to Standard Oil , rent Parks away from the government and sent him to Pittsburgh to snap the caller ’s Penola grease plant , as part of the company ’s public relations effort during World War II . The Penola plant , situate in the city’sStrip Districtnear business district , had become a big raft in the war drive , because it acquire " Eisenhower grease , " a grade of lube that was equal to of keeping tankful on the move in the gritty environment of North Africa and elsewhere .
" I believe Stryker understand that Parks had a skill set that would allow him to understand and relate to the prole in this plant , and really appropriate the story of the manufacturing through those individuals , " Leers says .
The hot , pungent surroundings was difficult for Parks to shape in . " photograph the grunge plant at Pittsburgh was a pretty filthy job , " Parks wrote to Stryker in 1944 . " It was foul because in every building and on every floor lubricating oil was underfoot . The Interior Department in the older construction were extremely dark and engross raft of light , so it was necessary to use long extensions and many bulbs . The extensions , throughout the day , were covered with dirt . "
Parks ' lubricating oil works exposure are select examples of his methodical trend . Unlike , say , Henri Cartier - Bresson , a contemporary who focused upon capturing what he call " the decisive moment " on film , Parks did n’t leave behind anything to happen . He carefully sleuth his images , posing his subjects and planning lighting from multiple root . " He ’s very actively using the proficient science with the camera to accomplish what he wants to see in his photograph , " Leers aver .
But that did n’t mean that Parks ' images were any less true . Before he shoot down any film , he spent a lot of metre talking with and observing his subjects , learning about what they did in their line . He photographed grease plant worker in their workplaces , dress in their work uniforms and hold back the tools that they used every sidereal day . " There ’s a dialog between the photographer and the subject field , " sneer says . " You usually do n’t have that with a photojournalist . They ’re unremarkably either the fly on the wall , or just passing through . Parks gets to know these individuals … and he ’s take the time to really impersonate them in the light that he wants to see them , but probably also in the light that they want to see themselves . I think a circle of these guys probably were very proud of the fact that they ’d been photograph by him . "
One of his most iconic figure of speech , show up at left , depicts a Black worker in the cooper ’s room , surrounded by steam as he hoists a enceinte drum that had been clean from a boiling lye vat . Other ikon show workersrising in a freight elevatorandposing solemnly next to gaugeson the flora ’s machinery .
Parks also subtly worked messages about race relations into his images , to the compass point where the plant ’s management seek unsuccessfully to control who he snap , so that he would n’t focus too much on the Black workers , who had some of the most grave and hard jobs .
" It ’s also a credit to Parks that he was able to find mo of comradeship and partnership between people of different races , " sneer says . " It was n’t just a matter of fateful and white . Parks is such a endowment that he ’s capable to see the subtlety , and to shoot grease - makers who are clean and pitch-dark at their jobs , or playing checkers on their luncheon break . And I think he also recognized that regardless of their race , a lot of these men were very proud of the workplace they were doing . Even though they ’re not on the front lineage of the war , the employment they ’re doing is actively contributing to the success overseas . "
Parks' Later Career
Rosa Parks spent time in Pittsburgh in March and September 1944 and then repay in 1946 . After he ’d fill in his work there for Standard Oil , he induce a free lance duty assignment from Life powder store in 1948 to photograph a Harlem gang , and finally was hired as a faculty lensman . In his 20 - class life history at the clip , his photographic subject ranged from an impoverished young boy in Rio de Janeiro to Hollywood stars such as Henry Fonda and Ingrid Bergman , as well as fateful celebrities drift fromDuke EllingtontoMuhammad Ali .
In addition to being a photographer , Parks was involved in an salmagundi of other aesthetic enterprise . He write poetry , write a philharmonic and became the author of a bestselling semi - autobiographical novel , " The Learning Tree . " A studio executive who admire his photography hired him to direct the film version of his book . While he was n’t the first black theatre director to steer a feature of speech - distance celluloid — that would beOscar Micheaux , back in 1919 — Parks was thefirst to direct a major Hollywood pic . The movie did well enough that in 1971 , MGM engage Parks to point " Shaft . "
Parks continued to break young terra firma beyond photography , including grow , organise and compose music for a concert dance about the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1989 , and won legion awards , including the National Medal of the Arts in 1988 . He died in 2006 . Today , The Gordon Parks Foundationis dedicate to preserve his legacy .
" Gordon Parks in Pittsburgh , 1944/1946 " will be on display at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania , from April 30 through Aug. 7 , 2022 . Please visit thewebsitefor details .
