GORDON PARKS

Parks (1912- ) was born in Fort Scott, Kansas, and after his mother died when he was 15, Parks left for Minneapolis, supporting himself by working odd jobs. At the age of 25, he began to consider photography as a career direction. He tried his hand at fashion photography, and in 1942, he moved to Washington, D.C. to work at the Farm Services Administration (FSA), a government agency designed to call attention to the plight of the needy during the Depression and to create an historical record of social and cultural conditions across the country. It was one of the first photos Parks was inspired to make during this period that is now considered his signature image: American Gothic, Washington D.C., 1942. The following year the Office of War Information (OWI) assigned him to photograph the 332nd Fighter Group, the first black air corps. In 1944, Parks renewed his search for photography jobs in the fashion world, and Vogue editor Alexander Liberman hired Parks to shoot a collection of evening gowns. Parks photographed fashion for Vogue until he became the first black photographer at Life magazine in 1948. His assignments included photographing gang warfare in Harlem as well as high fashions in New York, Paris, Italy, Spain, and Portugal.

Parks’ photography of poverty focused on the impact it had on individuals, whether in Harlem or in the backdrop of Rio De Janeiro, and the success with which he portrayed the beauty and passion of humanity in the ugliness of violence, despair, and poverty vaulted him to the status of one of the country’s most influential photojournalists during the 1960s. Parks also began to make films in the early 1960s, and his award-winning film, based on his book The Learning Tree and completed in 1969, was one of the first Hollywood motion pictures directed by an African American filmmaker. Parks went on to make Shaft (1971), Leadbelly (1976), Solomon Northup’s Odyssey (1984) as well as other movies. His musical compositions of classical, blues, and popular music-including a symphony, sonatas, concertos, and a ballet about the life of Martin Luther King Jr. titled Martin (1989)-have been performed and recorded internationally.

References
Parks, Gordon. A Choice of Weapons. New York: Harper & Row, 1966.
- - - . Flash Photography. New York: F. Watts, 1947.
- - - . The Learning Tree. New York: Evanston: Harper & Row, 1963.
- - - . To Smile in Autumn: A Memoir. New York: Norton, 1979.
- - - . Voices in the Mirror: An Autobiography. New York: Doubleday, 1990.

P.H. POLK

Polk (1898-1985) was the official photographer for Tuskegee University for 50 years. He also documented African-American rural farm workers, made studio portraits of the affluent black families of the 1930s, and is famous for his photo portraits of George Washington Carver. Polk photographed with careful attention to light, background, environment and composition, producing images that are important for both their aesthetic vision and historic value.