Gordon Roger Alexander Buchannan Parks worked in photography, music, film, poetry, Journalism, was also an activist before his death on March 7, 2006. He will be most remembered for his photo essays and as the director of the film Shaft.
Gordon Parks was the youngest of 15 children, born in Fort Scott, Kansas in 1912. The main influence in his life was his mother who did not let him justify his failures with the being black he made a comment that his mother told him that “If a white boy can do it, then you can do it too, and do it better or dont come home.”, this influence is what instilled in him this self confidence, ambition, and capacity for hard work. After the death of his mother he was sent away by his father to live with his married sister, but did not get along with his brother in law, he and his brother in law did not get along, and after a fight he was evicted, he had only lived there for a few week.
He first began his love of photographry after veiwing photos of migrent workers, and then bought his first camera a Voigtländer Brilliant, for $12.50 at a pawnshop. He was prompted to get into fashion by the clerk who developed the film. He then got a assignment at Frank Murphy’s womens clothing store. His work was noticed by Marva Louis, heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis’ elegant wife. She encouraged Parks to move to Chicago, where he began a portrait business for society women. Parks moved from job to job, developing a freelance portrait and fashion photographer sideline. He began to chronicle the city’s South Side black ghetto and in 1941 an exhibition of those photographs won Parks a photography fellowship with the Farm Security Administration. Working as a trainee under Roy Stryker, Parks created one of his best known photographs, American Gothic.
After the FSA disbanded, Parks remained in Washington as a correspondent with the Office of War Information, but became disgusted with the prejudice he encountered and resigned in 1944. Moving to Harlem, Parks became a freelance fashion photographer for Vogue. Parks renewed his search for photography jobs in the fashion world. Despite racist attitudes of the day, Vogue editor Alexander Liberman hired him to shoot a collection of evening gowns. Parks photographed fashion for Vogue for the next few years. During this time, he published his first two books, Flash Photography 1947 and Camera Portraits: Techniques and Principles of Documentary Portraiture 1948.
A 1948 photo essay on a young Harlem gang leader won Parks a staff job as a photographer and writer with Life magazine. For 20 years, Parks produced photos on subjects including fashion, sports, Broadway, poverty, racial segregation, and portraits of Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Muhammad Ali, and Barbra Streisand. His 1961 photo essay on a poor Brazilian boy named Flavio da Silva, who was dying from bronchial pneumonia and malnutrition, brought donations that saved the boy’s life and paid for a new home for his family.
Parks was married and divorced three times. His wives were Sally Alvis, Elizabeth Campbell and Genevieve Young, a book editor whom he married in 1973 and divorced in 1979. For many years, Parks was romantically involved with the railroad heiress and designer Gloria Vanderbilt. Parks lived at the fashionable New York address of 860 United Nations Plaza on the east side. Gordon Parks died of cancer at the age of 93.
