NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Gordon Parks

Gordon Roger Alexander Buchannan Parks (November 30, 1912 – March 7, 2006) was a groundbreaking African-American photographer, musician, poet, novelist, journalist, activist and film director. He is best remembered for his photo essays for Life magazine and as the director of the 1971 film Shaft. Image File history File linksMetadata GordonParks3. ... Image File history File linksMetadata GordonParks3. ... Demonstrator at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was a large political rally that took place on August 28, 1963. ... November 30 is the 334th day (335th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar, with 31 days remaining. ... 1912 (MCMXII) was a leap year starting on Monday in the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Tuesday in the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... March 7 is the 66th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (67th in leap years). ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... Languages Predominantly American English Religions Protestantism (chiefly Baptist and Methodist); Roman Catholicism; Islam Related ethnic groups Sub-Saharan Africans and other African groups, some with Native American groups. ... Photography [fÓ™tÉ‘grÓ™fi:],[foÊŠtÉ‘grÓ™fi:] is the process of recording pictures by means of capturing light on a light-sensitive medium, such as a sensor or film. ... For other uses, see Music (disambiguation). ... The poor poet A poet is a person who writes poetry. ... A novel (from French nouvelle Italian novella, new) is an extended, generally fictional narrative, typically in prose. ... Journalism is a discipline of gathering, writing and reporting news, and more broadly it includes the process of editing and presenting the news articles. ... Activism, in a general sense, can be described as intentional action to bring about social or political change. ... The film director, on the right, gives last minute direction to the cast and crew, whilst filming a costume drama on location in London. ... â€œLIFEâ€ redirects here. ... Shaft is a 1971 film used as a model for blaxploitation films, but many debate whether it actually falls under the category of blaxploitation itself (it has more elements of film noir). ...

Early years

The youngest of 15 children, Parks was born into a poor, black family in segregated Fort Scott, Kansas. His mother, a staunch Methodist, was the main influence on his life, refusing to allow her son to justify failure with the excuse that he had been born black, and instilling in him self-confidence, ambition and a capacity for hard work. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (3272x4628, 2948 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Wikipedia:Featured pictures Gordon Parks User:Davepape User talk:Davepape Wikipedia:Featured pictures candidates/October-2006 Wikipedia:Featured... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (3272x4628, 2948 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Wikipedia:Featured pictures Gordon Parks User:Davepape User talk:Davepape Wikipedia:Featured pictures candidates/October-2006 Wikipedia:Featured... Fort Scott is a city located 88 miles (158 km) south of Kansas City, on the Marmaton River. ... The Methodist movement is a group of denominations of Protestant Christianity. ...

When Parks was 15 years old, his mother died and he was sent to live with a married sister in St. Paul, Minnesota. He and his brother-in-law did not get along and he was evicted within a few weeks. He slept in trolley cars, loitered in pool halls, played piano in a brothel, worked as a factotum in a whites-only club, and worked as a waiter on a luxury train. State capitol building in Saint Paul Saint Paul is the capital and second-largest city of the state of Minnesota in the United States of America. ... Factotum is a 1975 novel by Charles Bukowski in which Henry Chinaski, Bukowskis alter ego, gets and loses jobs. ...

Parks later commented: “I had a mother who would not allow me to complain about not accomplishing something because I was black. Her attitude was, ‘If a white boy can do it, then you can do it, too—and do it better, or don’t come home.’”

Photography career

In 1938, Parks was struck by photographs of migrant workers in a magazine and bought his first camera, a Voigtländer Brilliant, for $12.50 at a pawnshop. The photo clerks who developed Parks' first roll of film, applauded his work and prompted him to get a fashion assignment at Frank Murphy's women's clothing store in St. Paul. Parks double exposed every frame except one, but that shot caught the eye of Marva Louis, boxer Joe Louis' elegant wife. She encouraged Parks to move to Chicago, where he began a portrait business for society women. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1024x718, 187 KB) Summary Farm Security Administration photo by Gordon Parks of Mrs. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1024x718, 187 KB) Summary Farm Security Administration photo by Gordon Parks of Mrs. ... VoigtlÃ¤nder is an optical company founded in 1756 by Johann Friedrich VoigtlÃ¤nder in Vienna and thus the oldest name in cameras. ... Joseph Louis Barrow (May 14 (sources differ), 1914 â€“ April 13, 1981), better known in the boxing world as Joe Louis and nicknamed The Brown Bomber, was a native of LaFayette, Alabama and is regarded as one of the greatest heavyweight boxing champions. ...

Over the next few years, 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, Washington, D.C.^[1] (named after Grant Wood painting American Gothic). The photo shows a black woman, Ella Watson, who worked on the cleaning crew for the FSA building, standing stiffly in front of an American flag, a broom in one hand and a mop in the background. Parks had been inspired to create the picture after encountering repeated racism in restaurants and shops, following his arrival in Washington, D.C.. Upon viewing it, Stryker said that it was an indictment of America, and could get all of his photographers fired;^[2] he urged Parks to keep working with Watson, however, leading to a series of photos of her daily life. Parks, himself, said later that the first image was unsubtle and overdone; nonetheless, other commentators have argued that it drew strength from its polemical nature and its duality of victim and survivor, and so has affected far more people than his subsequent pictures of Watson.^[3] Image File history File linksMetadata GordonParksLife04291945. ... Image File history File linksMetadata GordonParksLife04291945. ... Photo of a sharecropper by Walker Evans for the U.S. Resettlement Administration Initially created as the Resettlement Administration in 1935 as part of the New Deal, the Farm Security Administration was an effort during the Depression to combat rural poverty. ... Roy Emerson Stryker (November 5, 1893 - September 27, 1975) was an American economist, government official, and photographer. ... American Gothic (1930) Stained glass window in Cedar Rapids, Iowa 2004 Iowa state quarter Grant Wood, born Grant DeVolson Wood (February 13, 1891 â€“ February 12, 1942) was an American painter, born in Anamosa, Iowa. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Manifestations Slavery Â· Racial profiling Â· Lynching Hate speech Â· Hate crime Â· Hate groups Genocide Â· The Holocaust Â· Pogrom Ethnocide Â· Ethnic cleansing Â· Race war Religious persecution Â· Gay bashing Pedophobia Â· Ephebiphobia Movements Discriminatory Aryanism Â· Neo-Nazism Â· Supremacism Kahanism Ku Klux Klan Anti-discriminatory Abolitionism Â· Civil rights LGBT rights Womens/Universal suffrage Â· Feminism Mens... Nickname: Motto: Justitia Omnibus (Justice for All) Location of Washington, D.C., in relation to the states Maryland and Virginia Coordinates: Country United States Federal District District of Columbia Government - Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) - City Council Chairperson: Vincent C. Gray (D) Ward 1: Jim Graham (D) Ward 2: Jack...

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. He later followed Stryker to the Standard Oil (New Jersey) Photography Project, which assigned photographers to take pictures of small towns and industrial centers. Parks's most striking of the period included Dinner Time at Mr. Hercules Brown's Home, Somerville, Maine (1944); Grease Plant Worker, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1946); Car Loaded with Furniture on Highway (1945); and Ferry Commuters, Staten Island, N.Y. (1946). Image File history File linksMetadata GordonParksLife10231970. ... Image File history File linksMetadata GordonParksLife10231970. ... For other persons named Muhammad Ali, see Muhammad Ali (disambiguation). ... The United States Office of War Information (OWI) was a government agency created during World War II to consolidate government information services. ... For other uses, see Harlem (disambiguation). ... For other meanings, see vogue. ... Standard Oil (Esso) was a predominant integrated oil producing, transporting, refining, and marketing company. ...

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). Olympic Iliad, a Liberman sculpture at the Seattle Center in Seattle, Washington. ...

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. Image File history File linksMetadata GordonParksLife03081968. ... Image File history File linksMetadata GordonParksLife03081968. ... A cover of Life Magazine from 1911 Life has been the name of two notable magazines published in the United States. ... Broadway theatre[1] is the most prestigious form of professional theatre in the U.S., as well as the most well known to the general public and most lucrative for the performers, technicians and others involved in putting on the shows. ... Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little, also known as Detroit Red and Al-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Omaha, Nebraska, May 19, 1925 â€“ February 21, 1965 in New York City) was a Muslim Minister and National Spokesman for the Nation of Islam. ... Carmichael amidst a demonstration near the United States Capitol protesting the House of Representatives action denying Rep. ... For other persons named Muhammad Ali, see Muhammad Ali (disambiguation). ... Barbra Joan Streisand (born April 24, 1942 in Brooklyn) is an Academy Award-winning American singer, theatre and film actress, composer, liberal political activist, film producer and director. ...

Film career

In the 1950s, Parks worked as a consultant on various Hollywood productions and later directed a series of documentaries commissioned by National Educational Television on black ghetto life. ... The color NET logo was incorporated into a model building at the beginning and end of Mister Rogers Neighborhood from 1969 to 1970. ...

Beginning in the 1960s, Parks branched out into literature, writing The Learning Tree (1963), several books of poetry illustrated with his own photographs, and three volumes of memoirs. The Learning Tree is a 1969 film which tells the story of a young African American growing up in a rural setting in the early part of the 20th century, when racial discrimination was a social norm, legally sanctioned in parts of the United States. ...

In 1969, Parks became Hollywood's first major black director with his film adaptation of his autobiographical novel, The Learning Tree. Parks also composed the film's musical score and wrote the screenplay. Image File history File links Learning_tree. ... Image File history File links Learning_tree. ... The Learning Tree is a 1969 film which tells the story of a young African American growing up in a rural setting in the early part of the 20th century, when racial discrimination was a social norm, legally sanctioned in parts of the United States. ...

Shaft, Parks' 1971 detective film starring Richard Roundtree, became a major hit that spawned a series of blaxploitation films. Parks' feel for settings was confirmed by Shaft, with its portrayal of the super-cool leather-clad black private detective hired to find the kidnapped daughter of a Harlem racketeer. Shaft is a 1971 film used as a model for blaxploitation films, but many debate whether it actually falls under the category of blaxploitation itself (it has more elements of film noir). ... Richard Roundtree Richard Roundtree (born July 9, 1942 in New Rochelle, New York) is an African American actor and hero famous for portraying John Shaft in the film Shaft (1971) and in its two sequels: Shafts Big Score in 1972, and Shaft in Africa in 1973. ... Sweet Sweetbackâ€™s Baadasssss Song (Melvin Van Peebles 1971) Blaxploitation is a film genre that emerged in the United States in the early 1970s when many exploitation films were made that targeted the urban African American audience; the word itself is a portmanteau of the words black and exploitation. Blaxploitation... Organized crime is crime carried out systematically by formal criminal organizations. ...

Parks also directed the 1972 sequel, Shaft's Big Score in which the protagonist finds himself caught in the middle of rival gangs of racketeers. Parks's other directorial credits included The Super Cops (1974), and Leadbelly (1976), a biopic of the blues musician Huddie Ledbetter. Shafts Big Score, released in 1972, is the second film in the trilogy in which actor Richard Roundtree starred as the private-eye, John Shaft. ... Wide move poster for Leadbelly. ... A biographical film or biopic is a film about a particular person or group of people, based on events that actually happened. ... Leadbelly (January 29, 1885 - December 6, 1949) was an influential blues singer and guitarist. ...

In the 1980s, he made several films for television and composed the music and libretto for Martin, a ballet tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr., which premiered in Washington, D.C. in 1989 and was screened on national television on King's birthday in 1990. â€œMartin Luther Kingâ€ redirects here. ...

Writing and music

In 1981, Parks turned to fiction with Shannon, a novel about Irish immigrants fighting their way up the social ladder in turbulent early 20th-century New York. Parks' writing accomplishments include novels, poetry, autobiography, and non-fiction including photographic instructional manuals and filmmaking books.

A self-taught pianist, Parks composed Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1953) and Tree Symphony (1967). In 1989, he composed and choreographed Martin, a ballet dedicated to civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. Parks also performed as a jazz pianist. Image File history File links This image is of a DVD cover, and the copyright for it is most likely owned by either the publisher of the DVD or the studio which produced the movie in question. ... Image File history File links This image is of a DVD cover, and the copyright for it is most likely owned by either the publisher of the DVD or the studio which produced the movie in question. ... Shaft is a 1971 film used as a model for blaxploitation films, but many debate whether it actually falls under the category of blaxploitation itself (it has more elements of film noir). ... Painting of ballet dancers by Edgar Degas, 1872. ... â€œMartin Luther Kingâ€ redirects here. ... Jazz is a musical art form that originated in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States around the start of the 20th century. ...

Parks was also a campaigner for civil rights; subject of film and print profiles, notably Half Past Autumn in 2000; and had a gallery exhibit of his photo-related, abstract oil paintings in 1981. Parks was married and divorced three times and died of cancer at the age of 93. Civil rights or positive rights are those legal rights retained by citizens and protected by the government. ...

Legacy

Parks is remembered for his activism, filmmaking, photography, and writings. He was the first African American to work at Life magazine, and the first to write, direct, and score a Hollywood film.

Parks was a co-founder of Essence magazine and one of the early contributors to the blaxploitation genre. Essence is an American fashion, lifestyle and entertainment magazine. ... Sweet Sweetbackâ€™s Baadasssss Song (Melvin Van Peebles 1971) Blaxploitation is a film genre that emerged in the United States in the early 1970s when many exploitation films were made that targeted the urban African American audience; the word itself is a portmanteau of the words black and exploitation. Blaxploitation...

In 1984 Parks received an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Thiel College, a private, liberal arts college in Greenville, Pennsylvania. Thiel College is a liberal arts college associated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America located in Greenville, Pennsylvania. ... Greenville is a borough in Mercer County, Pennsylvania on the Shenango River, 85 miles (137 km) north by west of Pittsburgh. ...

In 1989, the United States Library of Congress deemed The Learning Tree "culturally significant" due to its being the first major studio feature film directed by an African-American. Thus, the film was preserved in the United States National Film Registry. The Great Hall interior. ... The National Film Registry is the registry of films selected by the United States National Film Preservation Board for preservation in the Library of Congress. ...

In 1995, Parks announced that he will donate his papers and entire artistic collection to the Library of Congress. One year later, "The Gordon Parks Collection" was currated. The Great Hall interior. ...

In 1997, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. mounted a career retrospective on Parks, Half Past Autumn: The Art of Gordon Parks. Corcoran Gallery of Art, main entrance on 17th Street The Corcoran Gallery of Art is the largest privately supported cultural institution in Washington, DC. The museums main focus is American art. ...

In 2000, the Library of Congress deemed Shaft to be "culturally significant", selecting it for NFR preservation as well.

Parks himself said that freedom was the theme of all of his work, Not allowing anyone to set boundaries, cutting loose the imagination and then making the new horizons.^[1]

Parks' late son, Gordon Parks, Jr., directed blaxploitation films, including Superfly. Gordon Parks, Jr. ... Post of film Superfly is a 1972 (see 1972 in film) blaxploitation film known primarily for its soundtrack by soul singer Curtis Mayfield (see Superfly (soundtrack)). In fact, Superfly is the only movie ever to have been outgrossed by its soundtrack. ...

Works summary

Books

Image File history File linksMetadata GordonParks1. ... Image File history File linksMetadata GordonParks1. ...

Compilations of poetry and photography

Films

Please do not edit yet. ... The Learning Tree is a 1969 film which tells the story of a young African American growing up in a rural setting in the early part of the 20th century, when racial discrimination was a social norm, legally sanctioned in parts of the United States. ... Shaft is a 1971 film used as a model for blaxploitation films, but many debate whether it actually falls under the category of blaxploitation itself (it has more elements of film noir). ... Shafts Big Score, released in 1972, is the second film in the trilogy in which actor Richard Roundtree starred as the private-eye, John Shaft. ... The Super Cops is a 1974 film starring Ron Leibman and David Selby. ... Wide move poster for Leadbelly. ...

Music

Documentaries on Parks

Contents

Early years

Photography career

Film career

Writing and music

Legacy

Works summary

Books

Compilations of poetry and photography

Films

Music

Documentaries on Parks

See also

References

External links

Contents

Early years GA_googleFillSlot("encyclopedia_square");

Photography career

Film career

Writing and music

Legacy

Works summary

Books

Compilations of poetry and photography

Films

Music

Documentaries on Parks

See also

References

External links

Early years