Amazon.com
Gordon Parks is one of the 20th century's greatest multitalented cultural treasures: a writer, poet, musician, composer, filmmaker, and photographer. In this book--the companion volume to a traveling retrospective--the full flower of Parks's genius is both awe-inspiring in its depth and thorough in its demolition of the era's social-science fictions about African American potential.
Born in Kansas, Parks wandered as a homeless teen, and through wit, smarts, and improvisation--and no experience--landed a job as a photographer for the Farm Security Administration, then with his new skill took pictures for Life magazine. "Tyrants, dictators, dethroned kings," he writes, "all stared into my camera with eyes that were unveiled. The camera revealed them as they were--human beings imprisoned inside themselves." Highlights among his photographic work include the haunting shot of domestic Ella Watson, the starkness of a 1940s teenaged gang leader named Red Jackson lying eternally young in his coffin, and the elegant, life-and-death ballet of the Spanish bullfight. Parks's depiction of Duke Ellington's towering music in motion reflects the importance of jazz and blues in Parks's artistry. From the films Shaft and The Learning Tree (the latter adapted from his own novel) to his impressionistic ballet honoring Martin Luther King Jr., his work swings with an American rhythm that continues to inspire him. "A musical theme vibrates in my sleep," he writes. "I get up, go to the piano, and jot it down. A blustery sky, a crescent moon, or the blazing sun can hurry me to poetry, or to the camera. When the doors of promise open, the trick is to quickly walk through them." --Eugene Holley Jr.
From Library Journal
This lavishly illustrated book of photographs from prolific African American artist Parks accompanies a traveling exhibit organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Though Philip Brookman, the Corcoran's curator of photography, offers an assessment of Parks's artistic contributions, his autobiography?revised, updated, and shortened for this retrospective volume?tells it best. Born in 1912, Parks began photography with a $7.50 camera in 1938 and later talked his way into a job with Roy Stryker at the Farm Security Administration. He went on to photograph a range of subjects, from factory workers and Harlem riots to fashion (for Vogue), Paris (for Life), the Civil Rights movement, and Muhammad Ali; his later color work is at once dreamlike and stark. Unrivaled in the emotional impact of his photographs and the range of projects he undertook?his bibliography/filmography lists 15 books of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and photography, and he has also written and directed several films and composed film scores, ballets, and works for piano and orchestra?Parks shows no signs of slowing down. The images in this fine book, presented chronologically from 1949, go right up to 1997. Highly recommended for photography, black history, photojournalism, fashion photography, and general collections.?Kathleen Collins, Bank of America Archives, San FranciscoCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New York Times Book Review, Andy Grundberg
...his photographs of the urban poor, from Harlem to the slums of Brazil, and of segregation in the South, are uniquely marked by the power of personal conviction.
From Booklist
Parks does not "take" pictures; he gives them. Now 84 years old, and the subject of a major traveling retrospective collection, Parks recalls his remarkable life in this magnificent union of memoir and art. Nearly 300 of Parks' photographs are collected here, images that speak volumes even as their drama is enhanced by Parks' circumspect but riveting narration. He traces the seemingly blessed course of his life from his childhood in Kansas as the youngest of 15 children to being sent to live in St. Paul, Minnesota, as a teenager after his mother's death, where he faced racism in all its virulence and realized that he not only had to learn how to survive but to fight back and satisfy his "urge to create." He chose his "weapons" wisely, the camera and the pen, and set out on what became not only an aesthetic quest but also a mission of compassion. A black man working for the white establishment, Parks was a bridge between worlds and a crucial presence in the long battle for racial equality, covering the civil rights movement for Life magazine. And whoever he photographed, whether it was members of Harlem street gangs, Winston Churchill, Duke Ellington, Ingrid Bergman, Malcolm X, Eldridge Cleaver, Muhammad Ali, or the poorest of Rio de Janeiro's poor, Parks earned his subjects' trust with his empathy, respect, and gratitude. The measure of his immense talent isn't confined to photographs, however, for Parks is also a writer, composer, and film director. Whatever his medium, he is always an artist of conscience. Donna Seaman
Home
