The Full Biography
Gordon Parks. Photographer. Filmmaker. Writer. The Fort Scott kid who taught himself a camera, put a government charwoman in Grant Wood’s pose, and then spent a later life directing a studio hit the town had not asked a Black man to direct.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is not his face first. It is Ella Watson, a broom, an American flag, 1942. American Gothic. What the still cannot show is Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks of Fort Scott, Kansas, a boy put on a train after his mother died, a piano player and a waiter who bought a used camera in a pawnshop, and a later life at Life, on a Shaft set, and in a New York apartment where he wrote until 2006.
He was born on November 30, 1912, in Fort Scott, the youngest of fifteen, to Andrew Jackson Parks and Sarah Ross Parks. Segregated schools. His mother died when he was fourteen; he was sent north to a sister in St. Paul and then, quickly, onto the street. He slept on trolleys. He played piano in a brothel. He waited tables on a railroad. In 1937, in Seattle, a pawnshop Voigtländer Brilliant cost him seven dollars and fifty cents and became the conservatory. He photographed society women in St. Paul and Chicago. Marva Louis, Joe Louis’s wife, sat for him and opened rooms. In 1941 a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship put money under the eye. Roy Stryker’s Farm Security Administration put him in Washington in 1942.
Ella Watson was a charwoman in the FSA building. She cleaned offices that would not have hired her to sit in them. Parks posed her with a broom and a mop in front of the American flag because the building had already posed everyone else. The photograph is not a joke about Grant Wood’s 1930 painting of an Iowa farmer and his daughter. It is a government file that refused to be polite. Watson is a person in the frame, not a symbol he invented. The broom was already her job. The pose is his argument. The Library of Congress still holds the negative. If you mention that still, you mention her name.
He moved from the FSA to the Office of War Information, then to Vogue, then, in 1948, to Life. He was the first Black staff photographer on that masthead in any lasting sense. The door was a Harlem essay: Red Jackson, a gang leader, a sequence that treated a boy’s face as news. Fashion, crime, poverty, celebrities — he would not be confined to one beat the magazine preferred for a Black man. He photographed Ingrid Bergman at Stromboli. He photographed Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Barbra Streisand. In 1961 the Flavio da Silva essay, a boy in a Rio favela, drew letters and money from readers who had not expected to meet that kitchen. He stayed at Life into the early 1970s. The magazine made him famous. He refused to become only its eye.
The Learning Tree, his 1963 novel, is Kansas as a pressure cooker: a Black boy, a town, a murder, a coming of age that is also a weather report. In 1969 he adapted it for Warner Bros. and directed it himself — a major studio feature by a Black director, drawn from his own life. That is the first. Shaft (1971), for MGM, is the hit the town understood. Richard Roundtree walks through New York as John Shaft, a private detective the camera has finally been invited to follow. Isaac Hayes wrote the score and won an Oscar. Parks took the job and the music and the private-eye grammar and made a man who did not ask permission to occupy the frame. He directed the sequel, Shaft’s Big Score! (1972), and then The Super Cops (1974) and Leadbelly (1976), a blues biography the studio did not know how to sell. In 1984 he made Solomon Northup’s Odyssey for public television, years before the story became a different decade’s picture. He composed concertos and a ballet, Martin. He wrote poetry. He did not become only Shaft’s father. He became, instead, a man who had already been Life’s eye and Kansas’s novelist.
The photographs are the first career and they are not a prelude to Shaft. American Gothic is Ella Watson in 1942, a charwoman Parks met in the FSA building, posed with the broom and mop of her actual shift in front of the flag that flew over the offices she cleaned. If the still is mentioned, her name is the caption. The Harlem gang-leader essay of 1948 is how Life hired him: Red Jackson’s face as news, not as sociology from a distance. The Flavio sequence of 1961, a boy in the Catacumba favela, is the essay that made readers send money and then argue about whether money was the point. He shot fashion at Vogue with the same eye he used on a kitchen in Rio. That double is the career. The magazine wanted him in one drawer. He kept both drawers open and then opened a third for film.
On the Shaft set he was a director who had already been a weapon with a camera. Roundtree’s walk is a Parks frame that moves. Hayes’s score is the hit inside the hit. Parks also wrote music for his own pictures; Shaft’s Big Score! carries his hand on the soundtrack as well as on the set. Leadbelly asked a studio to care about Huddie Ledbetter as a life, not a cue. The studio did not know how. He took the picture anyway. Solomon Northup’s Odyssey, for public television in 1984, is a fact the 2013 feature sometimes swallows: Parks had already put Northup on a screen. The Tree remains the Kansas. Shaft remains the pop object. Watson remains the file. He insisted all three run.
I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs.Gordon Parks
The turn is not Shaft. The turn is the decision, after the pawnshop, that the instrument would not be a hobby. The years that followed are books, more pictures, a composer’s hours, and a man who had outlived the magazine that made him famous. He died on March 7, 2006, in New York. He was ninety-three. Fort Scott, which had segregated him, put his name on things. That is a civic apology. The file was already complete.
Six things most people never knew
- Fifteen children, then a train. Sarah died. The self-taught eye sits on a boy who was no longer anyone’s youngest.
- The pawnshop camera is the conservatory. Not a school. A used machine and a will.
- Ella Watson was a person in the building, not a symbol he invented. 1942. The pose is his argument. The broom was already her job. The still is her photograph, credited as his.
- Life tried to keep him in one drawer. He would not stay. Fashion and the street in the same career.
- The Learning Tree is the first studio feature from his own life. 1969. Shaft is the hit. The Tree is the Kansas.
- He composed and wrote as a third and fourth occupation. The last decades are not a photographer’s coda. They are a man who refused a single instrument.
His children, including Gordon Parks Jr. — who directed Super Fly and died in a plane crash in Kenya in 1979 — have had to share a name that is a museum and a movement. Toni, David, and Leslie are in the same weather. Friends from Life describe a man who could be courtly and unyielding in the same assignment. Parks, in New York, kept the courtliness and the unyielding.
The later years
After Shaft, the life was long on purpose. He had already been a staff photographer, a novelist, and a studio director. He kept all three jobs and added a fourth and a fifth. Memoirs arrived as if they were assignments: A Choice of Weapons (1966) is the title that tells the truth about the camera; Voices in the Mirror (1990) and A Hungry Heart (2005) are a man walking back through Fort Scott, the train, the magazine, and the sets. He published poetry. He wrote about the pictures as if they were still in the enlarger. He composed for orchestra and for the piano. The ballet Martin, for Martin Luther King Jr., is a score most of the Shaft audience never heard. That is the point. He would not let a hit become a single instrument.
He photographed into old age. Fashion houses still called. So did museums that had once filed him as news. In 1988 the National Medal of Arts went to a man who had bought his first camera in a pawnshop. Honorary doctorates stacked up. Fort Scott, which had sent him away, put his name on a center and a celebration. He accepted the civic apology without pretending the childhood had been a prelude written for a plaque. In 2002 the Gordon Parks Foundation was organized to keep the archive — the FSA negatives, the Life essays, the film elements — from becoming only posters. He lived to see the foundation start. He did not live to see every exhibition it would hang.
Home was New York: Harlem in the memory, midtown in the address book, an apartment where he wrote in the morning as if a deadline still existed. Marriages to Sally Alvis, Elizabeth Campbell, and the editor Genevieve Young had already been chapters. The last years were work and a careful public. He died on March 7, 2006, in Manhattan. He was ninety-three, which is a full chapter, not a date. The obituaries led with Shaft because Shaft is the pop object. The contact sheets lead with Watson, with Red Jackson, with Flavio, with a Kansas boy the studio let him direct. Both leads are true. Only one is the file he started in 1942.
Harlem and midtown split the last addresses. Fort Scott is the first. The flag and the broom are the still. The private eye is the hit. The Tree is the Kansas. He kept the camera out of the drawer until the body quit. That is the last chapter: not a death date, but a man who had outlived the magazine, outlived the studio’s surprise that he could direct, and still treated the next page as an assignment.
The Foundation’s job, after 2002, was to keep Watson from becoming only a poster and Shaft from becoming only a joke about the 1970s. Parks lived long enough to see the archive named. He sat for interviews in which he still said the camera was a weapon and still named Ella Watson as a person, not a type. Students came to the apartment. He showed contact sheets. He talked about the train from Fort Scott and the pawnshop in Seattle as if they were still the conservatory. Honorary doctorates did not change the sentence. The National Medal of Arts did not change it. Fort Scott’s civic apology did not change it. He had already written the childhood in The Learning Tree and photographed the argument in 1942.
Gordon Jr.’s death in 1979 is the private hole inside the public career. A son who had directed Super Fly — another private-eye weather, another studio surprise — went down in a plane in Kenya on a commercial. Parks kept working. Friends say the courtliness held and the unyielding sharpened. He wrote. He composed. He let the magazine that had made him famous die its own death in the 1970s and 2000s without pretending he had died with it. The last assignment was the next page. He was ninety-three when the body quit. The stills did not. Watson is still in the building. Shaft is still walking. The Tree is still Kansas. That is a full chapter.
Exhibitions now hang Watson beside fashion, Red Jackson beside a concerto score, Shaft’s walk beside a page of The Learning Tree. That is the hang he wanted. The Foundation sends prints out and brings students in. Fort Scott keeps the civic apology on a calendar. New York keeps the last address in the archive. He had already said the camera was a weapon. The last years were the proof that he would not put the weapon down, and would not let a hit become the only barrel. Watson’s name is still the caption. It should stay the caption.
After he was gone
Every Black photographer at a glossy still walks through his masthead. Every studio director who was told the job was not for him still walks through The Learning Tree. Shaft is the pop object. Watson is the file. Both should run. The Foundation keeps the prints. Fort Scott keeps the apology. New York keeps the last table.
He came out of Fort Scott, rode a train, bought a pawnshop camera, posed a charwoman, walked into Life, directed his Kansas and then a private eye, and wrote until the body quit. If you only remember Shaft, you have the hit. If you remember the train, Watson, and the Tree, you have him.
Portrait: Rowland Scherman · Public domain (U.S. Government work) · via Wikimedia Commons