Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks
(November 30, 1912 – March 7, 2006)
He was an American photographer, composer, author, poet, and film director, who became prominent in U.S. documentary photojournalism in the 1940s through 1970s—particularly in issues of civil rights, poverty, and Black Americans—and in glamour photography. He is best remembered for his iconic photos of poor Americans during the 1940s (taken for a federal government project), for his photographic essays for Life magazine, and as the director of the films Shaft, Shaft’s Big Score and the semiautobiographical The Learning Tree.
Parks was one of the first black American filmmakers to direct films within the Hollywood system, developing films relating the experience of slaves and struggling black Americans, and helping create the “blaxploitation” genre. The National Film Registry citation mentions it as “the first feature film by a black director to be financed by a major Hollywood studio.”
Parks was married and divorced three times. His first two wives, comprising almost 40 years of marriage, were Black. He married Sally Alvis in Minneapolis in 1933 and they divorced in 1961, after more than 25 years. In 1962, he married Elizabeth Campbell, daughter of cartoonist E. Simms Campbell, and they divorced in 1973.Parks first met Chinese-American editor Genevieve Young (stepdaughter of Chinese diplomat Wellington Koo) in 1962 when he began writing The Learning Tree.[49] At that time, his publisher assigned her to be his editor. They became romantically involved at a time when they both were divorcing previous spouses, and married in 1973. This was his shortest marriage, lasting only six years. It ended in divorce in 1979.
Parks had four children by his first two wives: Gordon, Jr., David, Leslie, and Toni (Parks-Parsons). His oldest son Gordon Parks, Jr., whose talents resembled his father’s, was killed in a plane crash in 1979 in Kenya, where he had gone to direct a film. David is an author, with his first book, GI Diary, published in 1968. The book is included in the Howard University Press Classic Editions, Library of African American Literature and Criticism.
Parks was a longtime resident of Greenburgh, New York in Westchester County, New York, and his house was landmarked in 2007.
Parks has five grandchildren: Alain, Gordon III, Sarah, Campbell, and Satchel. Malcolm X honored Parks when he asked him to be the godfather of his daughter, Qubilah Shabazz.
Legacy
In film
With his 1971 film Shaft (along with Melvin Van Peebles’s Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, released earlier the same year), Parks co-created the genre of blaxploitation, an ethnic subgenre of the exploitation film that emerged in the United States during the early 1970s. The action film also helped to alter Hollywood’s view of African Americans, introducing the black action hero into mainstream cinema.[citation needed]
Director Spike Lee cites Parks as an inspiration, stating “You get inspiration where it comes from. It doesn’t have to be because I’m looking at his films. The odds that he got these films made under, when there were no black directors, is enough.”
The Sesame Street character Gordon was named after Parks.
In music
One of Parks’ photographs, 1956 Alabama, is used for the album cover of Common’s Like Water for Chocolate. It is a photo of a young black woman in Alabama, dressed for church, and drinking from a “colored only” drinking fountain.
Parks is referenced in Kendrick Lamar’s music video for his song “ELEMENT.”. In the video, some of Parks’s iconic photographs are transformed into moving vignettes.
Preservation and archives
Gordon Parks in his study, photograph by David Finn (late 1980s)
Several parties are recipients or heirs of different parts of Parks’s archival record.
The Gordon Parks Foundation
The Gordon Parks Foundation in Pleasantville, New York (formerly in Chappaqua, New York) reports that it “permanently preserves the work of Gordon Parks, makes it available to the public through exhibitions, books, and electronic media.” The organization also says it “supports artistic and educational activities that advance what Gordon described as ‘the common search for a better life and a better world.'” That support includes scholarships for “artistic” students, and assistance to researchers. Their headquarters includes an exhibition space with rotating photography exhibits, open free to the public, with guided group tours available by arrangement. The foundation admits “qualified researchers” to their archive, by appointment. The foundation collaborates with other organizations and institutions, nationally and internationally, to advance its aims.
The Gordon Parks Museum/Center
The Gordon Parks Museum/Center in Fort Scott, Kansas, holds dozens of Parks’s photos and various belongings, both given to the museum by Parks, and bequeathed to the museum by him upon his death. The collection includes “awards and medals, personal photos, paintings and drawings of Gordon, plaques, certificates, diplomas and honorary doctorates, selected books and articles, clothing, record player, tennis racquet, magazine articles, his collection of Life magazines and much more.” The museum has also separately received some of Parks’s cameras, writing desk and photos of him.
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
The Library of Congress (LOC) reports that, in 1995, it “acquired Parks’ personal collection, including papers, music, photographs, films, recordings, drawings and other products of his… career.”
The LOC was already home to a federal archive that included Parks’s first major photojournalism projects—photographs he produced for the Farm Security Administration (1942–43), and for the Office of War Information (1943–45).
In April 2000, the LOC awarded Parks its accolade “Living Legend”, one of only 26 writers and artists so honored by the LOC. The LOC also holds Parks’s published and unpublished scores and several of his films and television productions.
National Film Registry
Parks’s autobiographical motion picture, The Learning Tree, and his African-American anti-hero action-drama Shaft, are both permanently preserved as part of the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. The Learning Tree was one of the original group of 25 films first selected by the LOC for the National Film Registry.
National Archives, Washington, D.C.
The National Archives hold the film My Father, Gordon Parks (1969: archive 306.8063), a film about Parks and the production of his autobiographical motion picture, The Learning Tree, along with a print (from the original) of Solomon Northup’s Odyssey, a film made by Parks for a Public Broadcasting System telecast about the ordeal of a slave. The Archives also hold various photos from Parks’s years in government service.
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
The Smithsonian Institution has an extensive list of holdings related to Parks, particularly photos.
Wichita State University
In 1991, Wichita State University (WSU), in Wichita, the largest city in Parks’s home state of Kansas, awarded him its highest honor for achievement: the President’s Medal. However, in the mid-1990s, after Parks entrusted WSU with a collection of 150 of his famous photos, WSU—for various reasons (including confusion as to whether they were a gift or loan, and whether the university could adequately protect and preserve them)—returned them, stunning and deeply upsetting Parks. A further snub came from Wichita’s city officials, who also declined the opportunity to acquire many of his papers and photos.
By 2000, however, WSU and Parks had healed their division. The university resumed honoring Parks and accumulating his work. In 2008, the Gordon Parks Foundation selected WSU as the repository for 140 boxes of his photos, manuscripts, letters and other papers.[65][66] In 2014, another 125 of his photos were acquired from the foundation by WSU, with help from Wichita philanthropists Paula and Barry Downing, for display at the university’s Ulrich Museum of Art.
Kansas State University
The Gordon Parks Collection in the Richard L. D. and Marjorie J. Morse Department of Special Collections at Kansas State University primarily documents the creation of his film The Learning Tree. The Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art at Kansas State University holds a collection of 204 Gordon Parks photographs as well as artist files and artwork documentation. This collection is made up of 128 photographs that were chosen and gifted by Parks in 1973 to K-State, after receiving an honorary doctor of letters degree from the university in 1970. The gift included black and white images printed from negatives made between 1949 and 1970 and stored in the LIFE magazine archives; the donation also included color photographs printed from negatives in the artist’s private collection. The K-State gift is the first known set of photographs specifically selected by Parks for a public institution. The collection also includes a group of 73 photographs printed after two residences by Parks in Manhattan, Kansas. Parks first returned for a residency in 1984, sponsored by the local newspaper The Manhattan Mercury for its centennial; he returned for another in 1985, initiated by the Manhattan Arts Council and sponsored by the city and various community organizations and individuals. Seventy-three photographs printed after these visits were transferred from the Manhattan Arts Center to K-State in 2017. The photographs are of locations in and around Manhattan, including churches and historic homes and K-State architecture and students.
Exhibitions
American Art, Landmark Center Galleries, St. Paul, Minnesota
1997: Half past autumn : a retrospective Gordon Parks, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. A career retrospective.
2013: Gordon Parks: The Making of an Argument, New Orleans Museum of Art.
2015: Gordon Parks: Back to Fort Scott, Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
2015: Gordon Parks: Segregation Story, High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
2016: Invisible Man: Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison in Harlem, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.
2017: Gordon Parks: camera is my weapon, Zachęta Gallery, Warsaw, Poland.
2018: Gordon Parks: The Flavio Story, Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto, Ontario and the Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
2019: Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940-1950, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas.
2020: Gordon Parks X Muhammad Ali, The Image of a Champion, 1966/1970, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Comprising photographs from two Life magazine assignments.
2020: A Choice of Weapons Honor and Dignity: The Visions of Gordon Parks and Jamel Shabazz, Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, Minnesota.
2021: “The Impact of Gordon Parks,” multiple Parks films (including Leadbelly) screened and retrospective panel, Tallgrass Film Festival, Wichita, Kansas
Collections
Work by Parks is held in the following public collections:
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, Minnesota[citation needed]
Cleveland Museum of Art
Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, Minnesota
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida
Awards and honors
Parks received more than 20 honorary doctorates in his lifetime.
1941: Awarded a fellowship for photography from the Rosenwald Fund. The fellowship allowed him to work with the Farm Security Administration.
1961: Named “Magazine Photographer of the Year” (1960) by the American Society of Magazine Photographers.
1970: Kansas State University awarded Parks the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters.
1972: The NAACP awarded Parks the Spingarn Medal.
1974: Kansas State University hosted a week-long “Gordon Parks Festival”, November 4–11.
1976: Honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Thiel College, a private, liberal arts college in Greenville, Pennsylvania
1989: The United States Library of Congress selects The Learning Tree as one of the first 25 films chosen for permanent preservation as part of the National Film Registry,[61] deeming it to be “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” in part due to its being the first film directed by an African American to be financed by a major Hollywood studio.
1990: Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism, Missouri School of Journalism, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri
1998: Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Lifetime Achievement
1999: Gordon Parks Elementary School, a nonprofit, K-5 grade public charter school in Kansas City, Missouri, was established to educate the urban-core inhabitants.
2000: The Congress of Racial Equality Lifetime Achievement Award.
2000: Library of Congress selects Parks’s film Shaft for National Film Registry preservation—deeming it to be “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”
2000 (April): Library of Congress awards Parks its accolade “Living Legend”—honoring “artists, writers, activists, filmmakers, physicians, entertainers, sports figures and public servants who have made significant contributions to America’s diverse cultural, scientific and social heritage”—one 26 writers and artists so honored by the LOC.
2001: Kitty Carlisle Hart Award, Arts & Business Council, New York
2003: Royal Photographic Society’s Special 150th Anniversary Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS) in recognition of a sustained, significant contribution to the art of photography.
2002: Jackie Robinson Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award.
2002: Inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum.
2004: The Art Institute of Boston awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.
2008: An alternative learning center in Saint Paul, Minnesota, renamed their school Gordon Parks High School after receiving a new building
2021: The Gordon Parks Award for Black Excellence in Filmmaking, Tallgrass Film Festival, Wichita, Kansas, instituted in Parks’ honor.