Life as we know it
Gordon Parks was born in Fort Scott, Kansas in 1912, the youngest of sixteen children. Before making it as a successful photographer he went through many tough times. As his mother told him before her death. “Make a man of yourself up there. Put something in to it, and you’ll get something out of it” (Gibney). The weapons Parks used to get through life were poetry, music, and photography. “Those were the weapons I used to fight racism, bigotry, and poverty in America. My advice to young people, especially Black people, is to not let the enemy use you” (Gibney). As an aspiring artist he supported himself by working as a piano player, busboy, basketball player and Civilian Conservation Corpsman. He attended St. Paul Central High School working towards a diploma he never received. It was being a bus boy at the Lowry Hotel that exposed him to powerful people and new ideas. The Lowry Hotel was where influential band leaders of the time heard Parks compositions, and later performed them for longer audiences. At the age of twenty-five, he began to seriously consider a career in the direction of photography. Gordon Parks often created works of art centered around real life things due to how he grew up and . . .
This is a classic example of photojournalism. I let my heart persuade me toward what ever I needed at the moment; that’s where I went” (Gibney). He says, “Its difficult to explain myself and my art around the world. On the wall was a huge American Flag hanging from the ceiling to the floor. Parks was assigned to photograph poverty against a backdrop of cosmopolitan Rio De Janeiro in 1961. In 1956 Parks ventured into the deep South where he photographed a story about segregation in the United States. In November of 2002 the city wanted to move the location of the Kansas African American Museum. The Learning Tree was one of the first Hollywood motion pictures to be directed by an African American film maker, it also won and award. In what was to become his trademark style, he chose to focus on the Harlem gangs. Parks was best known as a photojournalist, this retrospective brought together for the fist time his photographs with his works as a filmmaker, novelist, poet, and musician. That same year he documented the Black Muslims, including Malcolm X, in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, detailing the development of education and self-reliance in this emerging religious and social movement. This is when Wichita Mayor Bob Knight led council approval for a land gift that would help museum supporter kick off a planned fifty-one million dollar fundraising campaign aimed at building a twenty-eight million facility and securing works promised by Parks. The search for land began in late September. He went on to make Shaft; Leadbelly; Solomon Northup’s Odyssey; Flavio; Diary of a Harlem Family; Shaft’s Big Score; The Super Cops; and Moments Without Proper Names.
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Acceptance Essays
