Gordon Parks - Research Paper Example

Research Paper - Gordon Parks An African-American photographer, Gordon Roger Alexander Buchannan Parks had a talented personality. He was equally good at music, poetry, writing novels and directing films. He was also an activist and knew the finer aspects related with journalism. The early part of Parks career was a shabby one since he did not come to terms with the amenities and luxuries of life. He slept in trolley cars, roamed around in pool halls and worked as a waiter on an affluent train. He was black by family and he knew that he could not complain because the society did not offer much to the blacks. His photography career began in the year 1938 when he saw images of migrant workers in a magazine and thus was forced to buy his first camera. Since he received appreciation for his photographs from the people around him, he was given fashion assignments for different clients and thus his journey started. Later on, he moved to Chicago where he initiated his own portrait business for the women of the society. [Eamonn, 2006] He developed freelance portraits for a period of time and also chronicled Chicagos South Side black ghetto. An exhibition soon after of those photographs won him a photography fellowship that was presented in connection with the Farm Security Administration. After this, Parks did not look back and created photographs, which were regarded as the best in the business. [Lawrence, 1992] When Farm Security Administration disbanded, Parks stayed back in Washington and worked as a correspondent for the Office of War Information. In the year 1944, he left the job since he felt there was a lot of prejudice and subjugation in the job regimes. He moved on to Harlem where he started his career as a freelance fashion photographer, working his way up through to the Vogue magazine. He took on several other projects, one such being the Standard Oil Photography Project that required of the photographers to take snaps of the small towns as well as the industrial zones and centers. The works of Parks included Car Loaded with Furniture on Highway, Dinner Time at Mr. Hercules Browns Home, Maine and Somerville to name a few. During this while, he continued his quest for finding new photography related jobs. The editor of the Vogue hired him for photographing a collection of evening gowns. He continued with his passion by shooting fashion for a number of years with Vogue. His books - Flash Photography and Camera Portraits: Techniques and Principles of Documentary Portraiture were published in the years 1947 and 1948 respectively. He won himself as a staff photographer and writer job with the Life magazine since his photo essay on a juvenile Harlem gang leader paved the way for the same, in the year 1948. For two decades, Gordon Parks produced different works on a number of subjects which entailed from fashion to sports, racial segregation to portraits of Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali and so on and so forth. As a film director, Parks’ career started in the 1950s when he worked as a consultant for several Hollywood productions. He went on to direct a series of documentaries for the National Educational Television which were based on the black ghetto life and the underlying aspects. He also wrote in the 1960s when his publication The Learning Tree (1963) brought forward poetry as well as his own photographs and not to forget his memoirs within them. In the year 1969, Gordon Parks became Hollywood’s first major black director when he adapted his own novel The Learning Tree into the form of a film. He composed the musical score for his film as well as contributed at writing the screenplay for the film. Shaft was Parks’ detective film, which was crowned as a major hit, and it continued in the form of a series known as blaxploitation films. [Yvonne, 2006] A year later, in 1972, he brought forward the sequel for Shaft which was known as Shaft’s Big Score which was also a hit. His other movies included The Super Cops released in the year 1974 and Leadbelly in 1976. Four years later, he stepped on to television whereby he produced films for the television medium as well as composed the music for them. The film’s name was Martin. His different documentaries included Soul in Cinema, Passion and Memory, All Power to the People, Baadasssss Cinema and Soul Man: Issac Hayes to name a few. His films comprise of The World of Piri Thomas’, Flavio, Solomon Northup’s Odyssey and others. In the year 1981, he turned towards writing fiction when he wrote Shannon which was a novel about Irish immigrants who were doing their utmost in their fight to live a happy life in the 20th century America. Parks also wrote a number of other novels, tried his hand at poetry, did his best at writing his autobiography as well as other non-fictional works. His pieces of poetry included Arias of Silence, Glimpses toward Infinity, Eyes with Winged Thoughts, Gordon Parks: A Poet and His Camera, Gordon Parks: Whispers of Intimate Things, Gordon Parks: In Love and Gordon Parks: Moments without Proper Names. Parks was also a self-taught pianist and he composed music scores for his own films as well as for Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in the year 1953 and for Tree Symphony in 1967. Gordon Parks played an active role at coordinating the society with the civil rights movements. He paid a lot of emphasis on the changing civil rights regimes and how the same benefited the human society as a result of the same. He leaves behind a legacy of his own – showing the true meaning of a multifaceted personality, one which knew photography, writing, composing, filmmaking, activism – all at the same time. His contributions are immense when one speaks of the society and its most basic regimes. He wrote for the Essence magazine as well and thus became one of the earliest contributors within the blaxploitation genre to come up. All said and done, Parks will be remembered for his works and contributions in the above mentioned fields of art. BIBLIOGRAPHY Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb. Life Photographer And Shaft Director Broke Color Barriers The Washington Post. 8 March 2006 Eamonn McCabe. "American beauty", The Guardian (G2), 2006-03-10, p. 8 Lawrence W. Levine (Dec. 1992). "The Folklore of Industrial Society: Popular Culture and Its Audiences" 97 (5): 1369–99 Word Count: 1,025 Read More