The 25th installment Of Inspirational Photographers
GORDON PARKS
(1912 – 2006) was a American photographer, composer, author, poet, 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. 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 films Shaft, Shaft's Big Score and the semiautobiographical The Learning Tree.
Parks purchased his first camera in 1937 and committed himself to becoming a photographer. A consummate observer of the world, he found inspiration in magazines, museums, and books. He began experimenting with portraiture and some of his photographs were featured in the local African American newspaper in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Though primarily self-taught, Parks’s education was influenced by other artists and mentors he encountered in the early part of his career. He would go on to achieve extraordinary success in his field, a major accomplishment for an African American photographer during the 1940s.
Her was one of the first black American filmmakers to direct films within the Hollywood system, developing films relating the experience of slaves and struggling black Americans, and helping create the "blaxploitation" genre. The National Film Registry citation mentions it as "the first feature film by a black director to be financed by a major Hollywood studio."
The youngest of 15 children, Gordon Parks was born in Fort Scott, Kansas. His parents had moved there from Tennessee in the years following the post–Civil War Reconstruction period. Although he was close with his supportive family, Parks could not ignore the inequality and racism around him. He recalls, “The indignities came so often that I soon began to accept them as normal. But I always fought back.”
A very important and prolific talented photographer
Gordon Parks: The Haunting & The Beautiful
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06_b_JjSz5I
Gordon Parks Photographs - Over 800 photos with no commentary in a 81 minute photo montage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLJFe9uD_7g
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