GORDON PARKS
Evening Prayer,
Muslim father and son, 1963
On assignment for Life magazine in the late 1960s, photojournalist Gordon Parks found himself fiercely trailed by police whileccruising the nocturnal streets of Berkeley, Calif., with a carload of Black Panthers. Confronted by one of the Panthers as to his motives for being there, unarmed, Parks replied, "You've got your weapon and I've got mine—a camera. We could both die tonight, but I've still got the more powerful one." As it turned out nothing happened that night, but his detractor was later killed in a police ambush.
Throughout a career spanning six decades, Parks, 85, has used his 35-mm camera and the other tools in his arsenal—books,
paintings, films and musical compositions—against the banes of racism, social injustice and poverty. In the late '30s as a
photographer for the Farm Security Administration, his forays into urban ghettos produced tender images of human existence
many Americans had never seen. That led to shooting fashion for Vogue and later becoming the first African-American staffer at Life. "He would create photo essays that were extensively researched and very personal," observes Phillip Brookman, curator of photography and media arts at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Parks' images "personalized and made people's lives accessible, which is probably his most important contribution."
In Half Past Autumn: The Art of Gordon Parks (Little, Brown), he writes: "...all stared into my camera with eyes that
were unveiled. The camera revealed them as they were—human beings imprisoned inside themselves." The book accompanies a
retrospective exhibition featuring 220 of his photographs taken since 1940, books, music, films and poetry. The exhibition is at
the Corcoran until Jan. 11 and will travel to nine cities. "This exhibition is who he really is," Brookman says. Parks will also
receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York Association of Black Journalists this month.
Given to constant reinvention, Gordon Parks has never allowed his abundantly creative spirit to be confined, much less remain
still.
—Jimmie Briggs
B.E.T.WEEKEND/DECEMBER-JANUARY 1998