Parks, Gordon

Parks, Gordon (Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks), 1912–2006, African-American photographer, filmmaker, writer, and composer, b. Fort Scott, Kans. Parks purchased his first camera in 1938 and became a photographer for the Farm Security Administration in 1942. A largely self-taught trailblazer, he was the first African American photographer at Vogue (1944–49) and on the staff at Life (1948–72). A powerful photojournalist, he specialized in hard-hitting studies of poverty and urban black life, but he also produced elegant fashion photography and arresting portraiture. From the 1960s on he wrote novels, memoirs, poems, and screenplays, and in 1964 directed the first of seven motion pictures. Parks was the first black to write, produce, direct, and score a major Hollywood film—The Learning Tree (1969), adapted from his 1963 coming-of-age novel. His blockbuster Shaft (1971) marked the debut of the African-American action hero. Parks also composed orchestral works and a ballet (1989), and was cofounder and editorial director (1970–73) of Essence magazine.

Bibliography

See his memoirs (1966, 1979, 1990, 1997, 2005).

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Parks, Gordon

(born Nov. 30, 1912, Fort Scott, Kan., U.S.—died March 7, 2006, New York, N.Y.) U.S. writer, photographer, and film director. As the first African American staff photographer for Life (1948–72), Parks became known for his portrayals of ghetto life, black nationalists, and the civil rights movement. His first work of fiction was The Learning Tree (1963), a novel about a black adolescent in Kansas in the 1920s. He combined poetry and photography in collections such as A Poet and His Camera (1968) and Glimpses Toward Infinity (1996). In 1968 he became the first African American to direct a major motion picture with his film adaptation of The Learning Tree. He later directed Shaft (1971), which helped give rise to the genre of African American action films known as “blaxploitation.” Parks also composed music.