Gordon Parks

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Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks (born November 30, 1912 in Fort Scott , Kansas , † March 7, 2006 in New York ) was an American film director , photographer , actor , writer and film composer . He was the first African American photographer and film director to gain national recognition in the United States .

Gordon Parks marching on Washington , 1963

Life

Parks was born the last of 15 siblings to Sarah and Andrew Jackson Parks. The father was a poor small farmer and casual worker. His mother was a staunch Methodist and died when he was fifteen years old. She had given him a strong will to succeed: “ If a white boy can do it, then you can do it too and do it better, or don't come home. “ For the next few years he lived in great poverty from changing jobs in the service sector as a waiter, conductor, singer in a big band or as a bar pianist in a brothel. He experienced professional discrimination several times because of the color of his skin .

photography

American Gothic
GordonParksFSA

In 1938, at the age of 26, he bought his first camera at a pawn shop for $ 12.50 . In addition to his job, he quickly developed into a freelance photographer for newspapers and magazines. He was discovered by Joe Louis ' wife Marva Louis and she encouraged him to come to Chicago to be able to start his own business as a portrait photographer for high society women . In 1941 he got a job with the government's Farm Security Administration (FSA) and made social documentary photo reports about the everyday life of African-Americans in the cities. His most famous recording was made in August 1942: American Gothic . It is a portrait of the cleaning lady Ella Watson in the FSA, who stood exhausted in front of an American flag with a mop in one hand and a broom in the other. This arrangement was based on American Gothic , the most famous painting by Grant Woods . Parks' main motive when taking photos was the documentation of social injustice, which is why he also viewed his camera as a “weapon”. " I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs, " he said looking back in 1999.

During the Second World War he was taken over as a war photographer by the US Office of War Information in 1943 through the intercession of his mentor, FSA director Roy Stryker , but was not allowed to make front-line reports. After that he was able to work for the fashion magazine Vogue for four years from 1944 . In 1948 he was the first black man to be taken over as a permanent employee for the then leading photo magazine Life . Until 1972 he worked there as a photographer and documented poverty and racial discrimination in the USA and the world. Parks was able to gain access to the most famous protagonists of the civil rights movement such as Malcolm X , Muhammad Ali , Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver and the Black Panther Party . However, he did not stop at reporting on the civil rights movement, he also actively participated in it.

For Cecil Beaton , Parks was the only black photographer to achieve world fame.

Movie

Parks was the first black film director to achieve success in Hollywood. With the detective John Shaft in the blaxploitation film Shaft , he created the first African American movie hero in 1971 . Success was based on the positive role model that made Detective Shaft attractive to African Americans. Shaft had a style-forming effect, thanks to the demand, more and more black films could be made for a predominantly black cinema audience. Isaac Hayes won an Oscar in 1971 for the score, and the title track became a commercial hit.

In 1973, Parks was inducted  into the newly formed Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame along with Clarence Muse .

literature

In 1969, Parks had filmed The Learning Tree, the first of five autobiographical novels. In 1970 he was one of the co-founders of Essence magazine and headed it from 1970 to 1973. Essence is still published today (2006) and is a lifestyle magazine for African-Americans. Parks also wrote poems and short stories .

music

Gordon Parks tried to face new artistic challenges throughout his life. He taught himself to play jazz piano and composed the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1953) and the Tree Symphony (1967). In addition to the soundtrack for his films, he also composed and choreographed the ballet Martin in memory of Martin Luther King , which premiered in Washington in 1989 and was televised on King's birthday in 1990.

Gordon Parks was married and divorced three times; he died of cancer at the age of 93. His son Gordon Parks Jr. (* 1934), who assisted him in his movies, died in an airplane accident in 1979 while he was filming in Kenya. Parks sr. leaves behind his daughter Toni Parks Parson and his son David, also from his first marriage, a daughter, Leslie Parks Harding, from his second marriage as well as five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Filmography

Director

play

composition

script

  • 1964: Flavio
  • 1969: Hass (The Learning Tree)

literature

  • 1963: The Learning Tree .
  • 1967: A Choice of Weapons , German: Despite unequal opportunities . Econ Verlag, Düsseldorf / Vienna 1967; Autobiography.
  • 1979: To Smile in Autumn .
  • 1990: Voices in the Mirror .
  • 2005: A Hungry Heart .

Illustrated books:

  • Thelma Golden (Ed.): A Harlem Family 1967 . Steidl, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-86930-602-5 .
  • Peter W. Kunhardt (Ed.): Collected Works. 5 volumes. Steidl, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-86930-530-1 .
  • Peter W. Kunhart Jr .: Gordon Parks. I am you. Selected Works 1942-1978 . Steidl, Göttingen 2016, ISBN 978-3-95829-248-2 .
  • Philip Brookman (Ed.): Gordon Parks. The New Tide, Early Work 1940-1950 . Steidl, Göttingen 2018, ISBN 978-3-95829-494-3 .

Awards

Although Parks did not have a college degree, he received over 40 honorary doctorates from US and UK universities. He was an honorary citizen of Baltimore and was named Photographer of the Year by the American Society of Magazine Photographers in 1960 .

Philafilm, an international film festival in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania, USA) awards the "Gordon Parks, Sr. Award for Cinematography", a film award for the best camera.

Exhibitions in Germany

In Germany, Park's works were shown relatively rarely and at large intervals, although the Time Life Gallery exhibition at photokina 1966 with the photo reports he had made for Life was one of the most discussed exhibitions. Only at documenta 6 and photokina 1980 were individual pictures of him shown again. In 1989/90 an exhibition with works from 40 years was shown in 12 German museums. In 2016, C / O Berlin dedicated the extensive exhibition “Gordon Parks. I am you. Selected Works 1942-1978 ".

Quotes

“I think most people can do a whole awful lot more if they just try. They just don't have the confidence that they can write a novel or they can write poetry or they can take pictures or paint or whatever, and so they don't do it, and they leave the planet dissatisfied with themselves. "

- G. Parks : 2000

"I still don't know exactly who I am. I've disappeared into myself so many different ways that I don't know who 'me' is."

- To Smile in Autumn

Web links

Commons : Gordon Parks  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Courtney Lewis: "Gordon Parks"  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Minnesota Monthly, February 2005.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.mnmo.com  
  2. ↑ America from the Great Depression to World War II: Black-and-White Photographs from the FSA-OWI, 1935-1945 .
  3. ^ “American Gothic” (August 1942) . New York Times , March 2006.
  4. ^ Andy Grunberg: Gordon Parks, a Master of the Camera, Dies at 93 . In: New York Times , March 8, 2006.
  5. ↑ Gordon Parks: Despite Unequal Opportunities . Econ, Düsseldorf / Vienna 1967, p. 253 f. and Chapter 24, pp. 278 ff. There, Parks describes how conservative congressmen prevented, as a colored photographer, from accompanying the first 332nd Combat Squadron of the US Air Force, which consisted only of colored pilots, to the European theater of war as originally intended.
  6. ^ "Gordon Parks captured a century of struggles in photos, film, music" ( Memento of the original from September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Delaware Online, March 9, 2006. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.delawareonline.com
  7. ↑ Thomas Buchsteiner, Karl Steinorth (ed.): Gordon Parks: 40 years of photography. Edition Stemmle, Schaffhausen 1989.
  8. ^ Exhibition website Gordon Parks at C / O Berlin
  9. ↑ The lives of a cat . In: Seattle Times , March 9, 2006, editorial.
personal data
SURNAME Parks, Gordon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Parks, Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American film director and photographer
DATE OF BIRTH November 30, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Fort Scott , Kansas
DATE OF DEATH March 7, 2006
Place of death New York , NY