Gordon Parks

Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks was born in Fort Scott, Kansas, on the thirtieth of November 1912, the youngest of fifteen children of a tenant farmer, Andrew Jackson Parks, and his wife, Sarah Ross Parks. He came of age amid the poverty and segregation of a small Kansas town, carrying the lessons of a devout, disciplined household.

His mother died on the ninth of May 1928, when Gordon was fifteen years old. Sent north to St. Paul, Minnesota, to live with a sister, he soon found himself largely on his own, laboring at odd jobs. In 1938 he bought a used camera in a pawnshop and taught himself to see the world through a lens, turning a self-made craft into a lifelong calling.

Parks rose to become the first African American photographer at Life and at Vogue, and earlier the first to work with the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information. His camera bore witness to poverty, dignity, and the struggle for civil rights, most famously in his portrait "American Gothic, Washington, D.C." In 1969 he became the first African American to direct a major Hollywood feature, adapting his own novel, The Learning Tree, and later directing Shaft.

Photographer, filmmaker, novelist, and composer, Gordon Parks died in New York City on the seventh of March 2006. He chose the camera as his weapon against injustice, and through it he taught a nation to look with clearer, more honest eyes. May his witness endure.