Gordon Parks Artist
Gordon parks is a photographer known for documenting the african american experience of racism and poverty from 1940s to 1970s.
Gordon parks artist. The new tide early work 19401950 that most significantly defined his point of view as an african american artist and documenter of american life at the dawn of the modern civil rights movement. Parks called his camera his weapon against poverty and racism. Not only an artist parks was an avid activist profiling and capturing the contentious race relations shifting in the us during his most active years as a photographer.
Parks worked for the farm security administration and the office of war information before becoming the first black staff photographer at life magazine. The above photograph is one of many documenting the protests happening throughout the united states. Photographer gordon parks efforts recording the early civil rights movement remain some of the most famous photographic works of the area.
He also pursued movie directing and screenwriting working at the helm of the. Gordon roger alexander buchanan parks november 30 1912 march 7 2006 was an american photographer musician writer and film director who became prominent in us. There he also made portraits of celebrities and activists like muhammad ali and malcolm x.
Parks is remembered as the first african american photographer who worked for vogue and life magazines best known for his documentary photojournalism of the 1940s through 1970s. He said my purpose has been to communicate to somehow evoke the same response from a seamstress in harlem or a housewife in paris. In his photography gordon parks strived to capture subjects tangential to race and socioeconomics shooting on staff for life until 1970.
Though his career as a photographer spanned six decades it is the period from 1940 to 1950 the focus of the exhibition gordon parks. He distills a world of experience and emotion into the way light and shadow play across the jaw fedora and bent hand. Gordon parks was a self taught artist who became the first african american photographer for life and vogue magazines.
Considered one of the most influential artists of the 20th century gordon parks was a self taught photographer filmmaker writer and composer. Documentary photojournalism in the 1940s through 1970sparticularly in issues of civil rights poverty and african americansand in glamour photography. In a career that spanned over 50 years photographer filmmaker musician and author gordon parks created an iconic body of work that documented american life and culture with a focus on social justice the civil rights movement and the african american experience.
Gordon parks was a self taught photographer writer composer and filmmaker.