Gordon Parks

Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks (November 30, 1912 – March 7, 2006) was an American photographer, musician, writer and film director, who became prominent in U.S. documentary photojournalism in the 1940s through 1970s—particularly in issues of civil rights, poverty and African-Americans—and in glamour photography.[2]

This article is about the photographer. For the Scottish sports journalist and former footballer, see Gordon Parks (footballer).

Gordon Parks
Born
Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks

(1912-11-30)November 30, 1912
Fort Scott, Kansas, U.S.
DiedMarch 7, 2006(2006-03-07) (aged 93)
Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
Works
Life photographic essays
Shaft
The Learning Tree
Solomon Northup's Odyssey
A Choice of Weapons (memoir)
ChildrenGordon Parks, Jr.
David Parks
Leslie Campbell Parks
Toni Parks-Parsons
AwardsNAACP Image Award (2003)
PGA Oscar Micheaux Award (1993)[1]
National Medal of Arts (1988)
Spingarn Medal (1972)

Parks was the first African American to produce and direct major motion pictures—developing films relating the experience of slaves and struggling black Americans, and creating the "blaxploitation" genre. 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 1971 film Shaft. Parks also was an author, poet and composer.[3][4][5][6]

Early life

Parks was born in Fort Scott, Kansas, the son of Andrew Jackson Parks and Sarah Ross, on November 30, 1912.[7] He was the youngest of fifteen children. His father was a farmer who grew corn, beets, turnips, potatoes, collard greens, and tomatoes. They also had a few ducks, chickens, and hogs.[8]

He attended a segregated elementary school. His high school had both blacks and whites, because the town was too small for segregated high schools, but black students were not allowed to play sports or attend school social activities,[9] and they were discouraged from developing aspirations for higher education. Parks related in a documentary on his life that his teacher told him that his desire to go to college would be a waste of money.

When Parks was eleven years old, three white boys threw him into the Marmaton River, believing he couldn't swim. He had the presence of mind to duck underwater so they wouldn't see him make it to land.[10] His mother died when he was fourteen. He spent his last night at the family home sleeping beside his mother's coffin, seeking not only solace, but a way to face his own fear of death.[11]

Soon after, he was sent to St. Paul, Minnesota, to live with a sister and her husband. He and his brother-in-law argued frequently and Parks was finally turned out onto the street to fend for himself at age 15. Struggling to survive, he worked in brothels, and as a singer, piano player, bus boy, traveling waiter, and semi-pro basketball player.[4][12] In 1929, he briefly worked in a gentlemen's club, the Minnesota Club. There he observed the trappings of success and was able to read many books from the club library.[13] When the Wall Street Crash of 1929 brought an end to the club, he jumped a train to Chicago,[14] where he managed to land a job in a flophouse.[15]

Career

Photography

At the age of 25, Parks was struck by photographs of migrant workers in a magazine. He bought his first camera, a Voigtländer Brillant, for $7.50 at a Seattle, Washington, pawnshop[16] and taught himself how to take photos. The photography clerks who developed Parks's first roll of film applauded his work and prompted him to seek a fashion assignment at a women's clothing store in St. Paul, Minnesota, owned by Frank Murphy. Those photographs caught the eye of Marva Louis, wife of heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis. She encouraged Parks and his wife, Sally Alvis, to move to Chicago in 1940,[17] where he began a portrait business and specialized in photographs of society women. Parks's photographic work in Chicago, especially in capturing the myriad experiences of African Americans across the city, led him to receive the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship, in 1941, paying him $200 a month and offering him his choice of employer,[18] which, in turn, contributed to being asked to join the Farm Security Administration, which was chronicling the nation's social conditions,[19] under the auspice of Roy Stryker.[12][20]

Government photography

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 (FSA).[12]

American Gothic, Washington, D.C. – a well-known photograph by Parks

Working at the FSA as a trainee under Roy Stryker,[5][12] Parks created one of his best-known photographs, American Gothic, Washington, D.C.,[21] named after the iconic Grant Wood painting, American Gothic—a legendary painting of a traditional, stoic, white American farm couple—which bore a striking, but ironic, resemblance to Parks' photograph of a black menial laborer. Parks' "haunting" photograph shows a black woman, Ella Watson, who worked on the cleaning crew of the FSA building, standing stiffly in front of an American flag hanging on the wall, a broom in one hand and a mop in the background. Parks had been inspired to create the image after encountering racism repeatedly in restaurants and shops in the segregated capital city.[22]

A later photograph in the FSA series, by Parks, shows Ella Watson and her family

Upon viewing the photograph, Stryker said that it was an indictment of America, and that it could get all of his photographers fired.[23] He urged Parks to keep working with Watson, which led to a series of photographs of her daily life. Parks said later that his first image was overdone and not subtle; other commentators have argued that it drew strength from its polemical nature and its duality of victim and survivor, and thus affected far more people than his subsequent pictures of Mrs. Watson.[24]

(Parks' overall body of work for the federal government—using his camera "as a weapon"—would draw far more attention from contemporaries and historians than that of all other black photographers in federal service at the time. Today, most historians reviewing federally commissioned black photographers of that era focus almost exclusively on Parks.)[22]

After the FSA disbanded, Parks remained in Washington, D.C. as a correspondent with the Office of War Information,[12][25] where he photographed the all-black 332d Fighter Group.[26] He was unable to follow the group in the overseas war theatre, so he resigned from the O.W.I.[27] He would later follow Stryker to the Standard Oil Photography Project in New Jersey, which assigned photographers to take pictures of small towns and industrial centers. The most striking work by Parks during that 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); Self Portrait (1945); and Ferry Commuters, Staten Island, N.Y. (1946).

Commercial and civic photography

Parks renewed his search for photography jobs in the fashion world. Following his resignation from the Office of War Information, Parks moved to Harlem and became a freelance fashion photographer for Vogue under the editorship of Alexander Liberman.[28] Despite racist attitudes of the day, Vogue editor, Liberman, hired him to shoot a collection of evening gowns. Parks photographed fashion for Vogue for the next few years and he developed the distinctive style of photographing his models in motion rather than in static poses. During this time, he published his first two books, Flash Photography (1947) and Camera Portraits: Techniques and Principles of Documentary Portraiture (1948).

A 1948 photographic essay on a young Harlem gang leader won Parks a staff job as a photographer and writer with America's leading photo-magazine, Life. His involvement with Life would last until 1972.[5] For over 20 years, Parks produced photographs on subjects including fashion, sports, Broadway, poverty, and racial segregation, as well as portraits of Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Muhammad Ali, and Barbra Streisand. He became "one of the most provocative and celebrated photojournalists in the United States."[29]

His photographs for Life magazine, namely his 1956 photo essay, titled "The Restraints: Open and Hidden,"[30] illuminated the effects of racial segregation while simultaneously following the everyday lives and activities of three families in and near Mobile, Alabama: the Thorntons, Causeys, and Tanners. As curators at the High Museum of Art Atlanta note, while Parks’ photo essay served as decisive documentation of the Jim Crow South and all of its effects, he did not simply focus on demonstrations, boycotts, and brutality that were associated with that period instead, however, he "emphasized the prosaic details" of the lives of several families.[31][32]

An exhibition of photographs from a 1950 project Parks completed for Life was exhibited in 2015 at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.[33] Parks returned to his hometown, Fort Scott, Kansas, where segregation persisted, and he documented conditions in the community and the contemporary lives of many of his eleven classmates from the segregated middle school they attended. The project included his commentary, but the work was never published by Life.

During his years with Life, Parks also wrote a few books on the subject of photography (particularly documentary photography), and in 1960 was named Photographer of the Year by the American Society of Magazine Photographers.[5]

Film

In the 1950s, Parks worked as a consultant on various Hollywood productions. He later directed a series of documentaries on black ghetto life that were commissioned by National Educational Television. With his film adaptation of his semi-autobiographical novel, The Learning Tree in 1969 for Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, Parks became Hollywood's first major black director. It was filmed in his home town of Fort Scott, Kansas.[34] Parks also wrote the screenplay and composed the musical score for the film, with assistance from his friend, the composer Henry Brant.

Shaft, a 1971 detective film directed by Parks and starring Richard Roundtree as John Shaft, became a major hit that spawned a series of films that would be labeled as blaxploitation. The blaxploitation genre was one in which images of lower-class blacks being involved with drugs, violence and women, were exploited for commercially successful films featuring black actors, and was popular with a section of the black community. 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.

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 include The Super Cops (1974) and Leadbelly (1976), a biographical film of the blues musician Huddie Ledbetter. In the 1980s, he made several films for television and composed the music and a libretto for Martin, a ballet tribute to Martin Luther King Jr., which premiered in Washington, D.C. during 1989. It was screened on national television on King's birthday in 1990.

In 2000, as an homage, he had a cameo appearance in the Shaft sequel that starred Samuel L. Jackson in the title role as the namesake and nephew of the original John Shaft. In the cameo scene, Parks was sitting playing chess when Jackson greeted him as, "Mr. P."

Musician and composer

His first job was as a piano player in a brothel when he was a teenager.[35] Parks also performed as a jazz pianist. His song "No Love", composed in another brothel, was performed during a national radio broadcast by Larry Funk and his orchestra in the early 1930s.[36]

Parks composed Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1953) at the encouragement of black American conductor, Dean Dixon, and his wife Vivian, a pianist,[37] and with the help of the composer Henry Brant.[38] He completed Tree Symphony in 1967. In 1989, he composed and directed Martin, a ballet dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights leader who had been assassinated.[39]

Writing

Starting in the late-1940s, Parks began writing—a second career that would produce 15 books and lead to his role as a prominent black filmmaker—starting with books on the art and craft of photography. Beginning in the 1960s, Parks branched out into literature, writing The Learning Tree (1963). He authored several books of poetry, which he illustrated with his own photographs, and he wrote three volumes of memoirs--A Choice of Weapons (1966), Voices in the Mirror (1990), and A Hungry Heart (2005).[5][12]

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 that includes photographic instructional manuals and film-making books. During this period, Parks also wrote the poem "The Funeral".

Painting

Parks' photography-related abstract oil paintings were showcased in a 1981 exhibition at Alex Rosenberg Gallery in New York titled "Gordon Parks: Expansions: The Aesthetic Blend of Painting and Photography."[40]

Essence magazine

Parks was a co-founder of Essence magazine and served as its editorial director during the first three years of its circulation.[41]

Personal life
Parks in 2000

Parks was married and divorced three times. He married Sally Alvis in Minneapolis during 1933[42] and they divorced in 1961. In 1962, he married Elizabeth Campbell, daughter of cartoonist E. Simms Campbell, and they divorced in 1973.[43] Parks first met Chinese-American editor Genevieve Young (stepdaughter of Chinese diplomat Wellington Koo) in 1962 when he began writing The Learning Tree.[44] 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. They divorced in 1979. Candace Bushnell claims to have dated Parks in 1976, when she was 18 and he was 58.[45] For many years, Parks was romantically involved with Gloria Vanderbilt, the railroad heiress and designer.[46] Their relationship evolved into a deep friendship that endured throughout his lifetime.

Parks had four children: 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.[47][48] 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.

He died of cancer at the age of 93 while living in Manhattan, New York City, and is buried in his hometown of Fort Scott, Kansas.

Legacy

In film

With his film Shaft (along with Melvin Van Peebles's Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, released earlier the same year), Parks is credited with co-creating 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.

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."[49]

In music

Parks is referenced in Kendrick Lamar's music video, for his song, "ELEMENT.". In the music video some of Parks' iconic photographs are transformed into moving vignettes.

Preservation and archives

Several parties are recipient or heirs to different parts of Parks' 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 also admits "qualified researchers" to their archive, by appointment. The foundation collaborates with other organizations and institutions, nationally and internationally, to advance its aims.[50]

The Gordon Parks Museum/Center

The Gordon Parks Museum/Center in Fort Scott, Kansas, reports that it holds dozens of Parks' photos, both given to the Museum by Parks, and various belongings 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' cameras, writing desk and photos of him.[51]

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."[4][12][25]

The LOC was already home to a federal archive that included Parks' first major photojournalism projects—photographs he produced for the Farm Security Administration (1942–43), and for the Office of War Information (1943–45).[4][12]

In April 2000, the LOC awarded Parks its accolade "Living Legend", one of only 26 writers and artists so honored by the LOC.[6][52] The LOC also holds Parks's published and unpublished scores, and several of his films and television productions.[12]

National Film Registry

Parks' autobiographical motion picture, The Learning Tree, and his African-American, anti-hero action-drama Shaft, have both been selected to be permanently preserved as part of the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.[4][25] The Learning Tree was one of the original group of 25 films first selected by the LOC for the National Film Registry.[12]

National Archives, Washington, D.C.

The National Archives also hold the film, My Father, Gordon Parks (1969: archive 306.8063) – a film about Parks and his production of his autobiographical motion picture, The Learning Tree,—is preserved in the National Archives of the United States—along with a print (from the original) of Solomon Nortup's Odyssey, a film made by Parks for a Public Broadcasting System telecast about the ordeal of slave. The Archives also hold various photos from Parks' years in government service.[22][53][54]

Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

The Smithsonian Institution has an extensive list of holdings related to Gordon Parks, particularly photos.[55]

Wichita State University

In 1991, Wichita State University (WSU), in Wichita, the largest city in Parks' home state of Kansas, awarded Parks 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 Parks' 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 repository for 140 boxes of Parks’ photos, manuscripts, letters and other papers.[56][57] In 2014, another 125 of Park's 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 Special Collections at Kansas State University primarily documents the creation of his film The Learning Tree.

Exhibitions

Collections

Parks' work is held in the following public collections:

Awards and honors

Works

Books
  • Flash Photography (1947)
  • Camera Portraits: Techniques and Principles of Documentary Portraiture (1948) (documentary)
  • The Learning Tree (1964) (semi-autobiographical)
  • A Choice of Weapons (1967) (autobiographical)
  • Born Black (1970) (compilation of essays and photographs)
  • Flavio (1978)[78]
  • To Smile in Autumn (1979) (autobiographical)
  • Voices in the Mirror, New York: Doubleday (1990) (autobiographical)
  • The Sun Stalker (2003) (biography on J. M. W. Turner)
  • A Hungry Heart (2005) (autobiographical)
  • Gordon Parks: Collected Works, (2012) Steidl; Slp Edition ISBN 978-3869305301
  • The New Tide: Early Work 1940-1950, (2018) Steidl

Poetry
  • Half Past Autumn: A Retrospective, memoir excerpts by Gordon Parks. Bulfinch Press/Little, Brown (1997) ISBN 0-8212-2298-8
  • A Star for Noon – An Homage to Women in Images Poetry and Music Bulfinch. (2000) ISBN 978-0821226858
  • Eyes With Winged Thoughts Atria Books (2005) ASIN B001EYHY00

Photography
  • Arias of Silence (1994) Bulfinch Press. ISBN 978-0821221204
  • Glimpses Towards Infinity. Bulfinch Press. (1996) ISBN 978-0821222973
  • A Harlem Family 1967. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, (2012) ISBN 978-3-86930-602-5
  • Gordon Parks: a Poet and His Camera by Gordon Park Viking Press (1968) ISBN 978-0233961088
  • The Atmosphere of Crime, 1957. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, (2020) ISBN 978-3-95829-696-1

Films
  • Flavio (1964)
  • Diary of a Harlem Family (1968)
  • The World of Piri Thomas (1968)
  • The Learning Tree (1969)
  • Shaft (1971) – Apartment Landlord (uncredited)
  • Shaft's Big Score! (1972, director and composer) – Croupier (uncredited)
  • The Super Cops (1974)
  • Leadbelly (1976)
  • Solomon Northup's Odyssey (1984)
  • Moments Without Proper Names (1987)
  • Martin (1989), PBS presentation of the stage performance of the ballet written about Martin Luther King Jr.
  • Shaft (2000) – Lenox Lounge Patron / Mr. P (final film role)

Music
  • Shaft's Big Score (1972)
  • Moments Without Proper Names (1987)
  • Martin (1989) (ballet about Martin Luther King Jr.)

Publications about Parks
  • Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr., Philip Brookman, eds., Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940–1950. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. and Steidl, 2018 ISBN 9783958294943
  • Paul Roth an Amanda Maddox, eds.,Gordon Parks: The Flavio Story. Gordon Parks Foundation and Steidl, 2017 ISBN 978-3-95829-344-1
  • Michal Raz-Russo and Jean-Christophe Cloutier, et. al., Invisible Man: Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison. Art Institute of Chicago and Steidl, 2016 ISBN 978-3-95829-109-6
  • Peter Kunhardt, Jr. and Felix Hoffmann, eds., I Am You: Selected Works, 1942–1978. C/O Berlin, Gordon Parks Foundation and Steidl, 2016 ISBN 978-3-95829-248-2
  • Karen Haas, Gordon Parks: Back to Fort Scott. Steidl, 2015 ISBN 978-3-86930-918-7
  • Brett Abbott, et. al, Gordon Parks: Segregation Story. High Museum of Art, Atlanta and Steidl, 2014. ISBN 978-3-86930-801-2
  • Russell Lord, Gordon Parks: The Making of an Argument. Steidl, 2013 ISBN 978-3-86930-721-3
  • Peter Kunhardt, Jr. and Paul Roth, eds, Gordon Parks: Collected Works. Gordon Parks Foundation and Steidl, 2012 ISBN 978-3-86930-530-1
  • Berry, S. L. Gordon Parks. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1990. ISBN 1-55546-604-4
  • Bush, Martin H. The Photographs of Gordon Parks. Wichita, Kansas: Wichita State University, 1983.
  • Donloe, Darlene. Gordon Parks: Photographer, Writer, Composer, Film Maker [Melrose Square Black American series]. Los Angeles: Melrose Square Publishing Company, 1993. ISBN 0-87067-595-8
  • Harnan, Terry, and Russell Hoover. Gordon Parks: Black Photographer and Film Maker [Americans All series]. Champaign, Illinois: Garrard Publishing Company, 1972. ISBN 0-8116-4572-X
  • Parr, Ann, and Gordon Parks. Gordon Parks: No Excuses. Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company, 2006. ISBN 1-58980-411-2
  • Stange, Maren. Bare Witness: photographs by Gordon Parks. Milan: Skira, 2006. ISBN 88-7624-802-1
  • Turk, Midge, and Herbert Danska. Gordon Parks. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1971. ISBN 0-690-33793-0

Documentaries on or including Parks
  • My Father, Gordon Parks (1969) (National Archives item #306.08063A)
  • Soul in Cinema: Filming Shaft on Location (1971)
  • Passion and Memory (1986)
  • Malcolm X: Make it Plain (1994)
  • All Power to the People (1996)
  • Half Past Autumn: The Life and Works of Gordon Parks (2000)
  • A Great Day in Hip-Hop (2000)
  • Baadasssss Cinema (2002)
  • Soul Man: Isaac Hayes (2003)
  • Unstoppable: Conversation with Melvin Van Peebles, Gordon Parks, and Ossie Davis (2005)

See also

References
  1. "Gordon Parks, IMDb". IMDb. May 1, 2009. Retrieved October 6, 2010.
  2. Hudson, Berkley (2009). Sterling, Christopher H. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Journalism. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE. pp. 1060–67. ISBN 978-0-7619-2957-4.
  3. Grundberg, Andy, "Gordon Parks, a Master of the Camera, Dies at 93,", The New York Times, March 8, 2006. Retrieved January 2, 2015.
  4. Allen, Erin, "Gordon Parks Remembered", in Library of Congress blog, November 30, 2012. Retrieved January 2, 2016.
  5. Ellis, Donna, "Gordon Parks Papers: A Finding Aid to the Collection in the Library of Congress,", with chronology, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, 2011, rev. Sept. 2011. Retrieved January 2, 2016.
  6. R. Retrieved January 2, 2016.
  7. "Gordon Parks, a Master of the Camera, Dies at 93". The New York Times. Retrieved March 3, 2019.
  8. Parks,1990, p. 6.
  9. Parks, 1990, pp. 1–2.
  10. Parks, 1990, p. 16.
  11. Parks, 1990, pp. 12–13.
  12. D'Ooge, Craig, "Photographer Gordon Parks Donates Archives to the Library of Congress", Archived March 6, 2016, at the Wayback Machine press release PR 95-096, 7/5/95, ISSN 0731-3527, Library of Congress, June 30, 1995. Retrieved January 2, 2016.
  13. Parks, 1990, pp. 26–27.
  14. Parks, 1990, pp. 30–34.
  15. Parks, 1990, p. 35.
  16. Gordon Park, bio Gale Group.
  17. Parks, 1990, p. 77.
  18. "Gordon Parks facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles about Gordon Parks". www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved April 5, 2018.
  19. "Artist – The Gordon Parks Foundation". gordonparksfoundation.org. Retrieved April 5, 2018.
  20. Moskowitz, "Gordon Parks: A Man for All Seasons," The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 2003.
  21. Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb, "'Life' Photographer And 'Shaft' Director Broke Color Barriers", The Washington Post, March 8, 2006.
  22. Natanson, Nicholas, "From Sophie's Alley to the White House: Rediscovering the Visions of Pioneering Black Government Photographers," from Prologue Magazine," Special Issue: "Federal Records and African American History, Summer 1997, Vol. 29, No. 2, National Archives website. Retrieved January 2, 2016.
  23. McCabe, Eamonn (March 10, 2006). "American beauty". The Guardian (G2). p. 8.
  24. Lawrence W. Levine (December 1992). "The Folklore of Industrial Society: Popular Culture and Its Audiences". The American Historical Review. Am erican Historical Association. 97 (5): 1369–99. doi:10.2307/2165941. JSTOR 2165941. S2CID 145168847.
  25. D'Ooge, Craig, "Media Advisory: Photographer Gordon Parks To Donate Personal Collection to the Library of Congress", Archived March 6, 2016, at the Wayback Machine press release PR 95-095, ISSN 0731-3527, Library of Congress, June 30, 1995. Retrieved January 2, 2016.
  26. "Youngster, Clutching His Soldier Father, Gazes Upward While the Latter Lifts His Wife from the Ground to Wish Her a "Merry Christmas": The serviceman is one of those fortunate enough to be able to get home for the holidays". World Digital Library. Retrieved February 10, 2013.
  27. Grundberg, Andy (March 8, 2006). "Gordon Parks, a Master of the Camera, Dies at 93". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved November 11, 2015.
  28. "Gordon Parks Pictures the Segregated South at Salon 94 Freemans". Vogue. Retrieved November 11, 2015.
  29. Lee D. Baker (1992). "Transforming Anthropology". Naming Moments Properly. 12 (1): 1–2.
  30. "CDS Exhibit Features Gordon Parks’s Segregation Series, 'The Restraints: Open and Hidden'", CDs Porch.
  31. Stange, Bare witness: Photographs by Gordon Parks, 2006
  32. High Museum of Art Atlanta, https://www.high.org/Art/Exhibitions/Gordon-Parks-Segregation-Story.aspx Archived March 16, 2015, at the Wayback Machine
  33. Kennedy, Randy, "‘A Long Hungry Look’: Forgotten Gordon Parks Photos Document Segregation", The New York Times, December 24, 2014 (with 11 images in a slide show); also published in print on December 28, 2014, p. AR1, the New York edition, with the headline "A Long Hungry Look".
  34. Parks, 1990, p. 278.
  35. Parks, 1990, pp. 19–20.
  36. Parks, 1990, p. 45.
  37. Parks, 1990, p. 150.
  38. Parks, 1990, p. 153.
  39. "Gordon Parks Foundation: Music". Gordon Parks Foundation. Retrieved January 27, 2017.
  40. "Gordon Parks, Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). Rhonna Hoffman Gallery page. Retrieved January 27, 2017.
  41. "Black History Month: Gordon Parks -". February 3, 2014. Retrieved January 27, 2017.
  42. Parks, 1990, p. 61.
  43. Sheena C. Howard, Encyclopedia of Black Comics, Golden: Fulcrum Publishing, 2017, p. 47.
  44. Parks, 1990, p. 207.
  45. "The Blonde Who's Had More Fun, p. 2 of 2". New York.
  46. "Gloria Vanderbilt + Gordon Parks". The New York Times.
  47. "Filmmaker Gordon Parks; victim of airplane crash", The Day, April 3, 1979.
  48. Parks, 1990, p. 335.
  49. "The Importance of Being Gordon Parks – Gordon Parks". dga.org. Retrieved April 5, 2018.
  50. Gordon Parks Foundation website. Retrieved January 2, 2016.
  51. "Museum" page Archived January 22, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, The Gordon Parks Museum/Center website. Retrieved January 3, 2016.
  52. "Living Legends", website of the Library of Congress. Retrieved January 2, 2016.
  53. Roe, Donald, "The USIA Motion Picture Collection and African American History: A Reference Review," from Prologue Magazine," Special Issue: "Federal Records and African American History, Summer 1997, Vol. 29, No. 2, National Archives website. Retrieved January 2, 2016.
  54. National Archives, "National Archives Hosts Screening and Program on Solomon Northup’s Odyssey May 20: Director Gordon Parks’ film predates 12 Years a Slave by 30 years!", press release 14–64, National Archives website, May 6, 2014. Retrieved January 2, 2016.
  55. Smithsonian Institution search for "Gordon Parks", January 3, 2016.
  56. "Wichita State chosen to receive Gordon Parks Papers", February 7, 2008, Wichita Eagle. Retrieved December 31, 2015.
  57. "Wichita State’s Ulrich Museum acquires 125 Gordon Parks photographs", February 7, 2014, Wichita Eagle. Retrieved December 31, 2015.
  58. Brookman, Philip (1997). Half past autumn : a retrospective Gordon Parks. Bulfinch Press. ISBN 0821222988. Retrieved January 27, 2017.
  59. "Gordon Parks: The Making of an Argument". New Orleans Museum of Art. Retrieved January 6, 2019.
  60. Lord, Russell (2013). Gordon Parks : The Making of an Argument. New Orleans Museum of Art, Steidl, The Gordon Parks Foundation. ISBN 978-3869307213.
  61. https://www.high.org
  62. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on March 16, 2015. Retrieved March 17, 2015.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
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  64. Brookman, Philip (2019). Gordon Parks: The New Tide: Early Work 1940–1950. Steidl/Gordon Parks Foundation/National Gallery of Art. ISBN 9783958294943.
  65. "Gordon Parks X Muhammad Ali, The Image of a Champion, 1966/1970". The Gordon Parks Foundation. Retrieved February 16, 2020.
  66. "Gordon Parks X Muhammad Ali, The Image of a Champion, 1966/1970". The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Retrieved February 16, 2020.
  67. Parks, 1990, p. 326.
  68. Chenrow, Fred; Carol Chenrow Carol (1973). Reading Exercises in Black History, Volume 1. Elizabethtown, PA: The Continental Press, Inc., p. 44. ISBN 08454-2107-7.
  69. Spingarn Medal Winners Archived August 2, 2014, at the Wayback Machine
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  71. "Missouri Honor Medal Winners: Individuals". Missouri School of Journalism. Retrieved November 16, 2015.
  72. "Gordon Parks Elementary School |". Gordonparks.org. October 2, 2010. Retrieved October 6, 2010.
  73. Associated Press and Bud Smith, "National Report: Nation Celebrates Holiday Honoring Martin Luther King, Jr." , Jet magazine, February 7, 2000, pp. 5–14 (Gordon Parks' award ceremony photo and report on p.14), photo and article as reproduced on GoogleBooks.com.
  74. Robishaw, Lori; Gard Ewell, Maryo (2011). Commemorating 50 Years of Americans for the Arts. Americans for the Arts. p. 124. ISBN 978-1-879903-07-4.
  75. Royal Photographic Society's Centenary Award Archived December 1, 2012, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved August 13, 2012.
  76. "Gordon Parks", "Inductees" section, International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum website. Retrieved January 14, 2016.
  77. Alternative School in Saint Paul, MN named for Gordon Parks. Gordon Parks High School website.
  78. "Flavio" at WorldCat.

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