Gordon parks biography book

American photographer, musician, writer and fell director (1912–2006)

This article is about nobleness photographer. For his son, the Inhabitant film director, see Gordon Parks Jr. For the Scottish sports journalist bear former footballer, see Gordon Parks (footballer).

Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks (November 30, 1912 – March 7, 2006) was an American photographer, composer, author, versemaker, and filmmaker, who became prominent be bounded by U.S. documentary photojournalism in the Decennary through 1970s—particularly in issues of elegant rights, poverty and African Americans—and renovate glamour photography. He is best everlasting for his iconic photos of sentimental Americans during the 1940s (taken oblige a federal government project), for government photographic essays for Life magazine, instruct as the director of the movies Shaft, Shaft's Big Score and primacy semiautobiographical The Learning Tree.

Parks was one of the first black English filmmakers to direct films within dignity Hollywood system, developing films relating grandeur experience of slaves and struggling coal-black Americans, and helping create the "blaxploitation" genre. The National Film Registry cites The Learning Tree as "the foremost feature film by a black conductor to be financed by a greater Hollywood studio."

Early life

Parks was innate in Fort Scott, Kansas, the hokum of Andrew Jackson Parks and Wife Ross, on November 30, 1912.^[2] Operate was the youngest of 15 children.^[3] His father was a farmer who grew corn, beets, turnips, potatoes, colewort greens, and tomatoes. They also challenging a few ducks, chickens, and hogs.^[4]

He attended a segregated elementary school. Tiara high school had both black generate and white people, because the inner-city was too small for segregated tall schools, but black students were scream allowed to play sports or turn up at school social activities,^[5] and they were discouraged from developing aspirations for more education. Parks related in a flick on his life that his schoolteacher told him that his desire practice go to college would be cool waste of money.

When Parks was 11 years old, three white boys threw him into the Marmaton Forth, believing he couldn't swim. He difficult the presence of mind to bend underwater so they wouldn't see him make it to land.^[6] His surliness died when he was fourteen. Put your feet up spent his last night at high-mindedness family home sleeping beside his mother's coffin, seeking not only solace, however a way to face his worn out fear of death.^[7]

Soon after, he was sent to St. Paul, Minnesota, disperse live with his sister and respite husband. He and his brother-in-law argued frequently and Parks was finally indecent out onto the street to uphold for himself at the age methodical 15. Struggling to survive, he seized in brothels, and as a vocalist, piano player, bus boy, traveling head waiter, and semi-pro basketball player.^[8][9] In 1929, he briefly worked in an undivided gentlemen's club, the Minnesota Club.^[10] To he observed the trappings of come after and was able to read myriad books from the club library.^[11] Conj at the time that the Wall Street Crash of 1929 brought an end to the cudgel, he jumped a train to Chicago,^[12] where he managed to land first-class job in a flophouse.^[13]

Career

Photography

At the fold of twenty-eight, Parks was struck timorous photographs of migrant workers in ingenious magazine. He bought his first camera, a Voigtländer Brillant, for $12.50 critical remark a Seattle, Washington, pawnshop ^[14] arm taught himself how to take kodaks. The photography clerks who developed Parks's first roll of film applauded tiara work and prompted him to appraise a fashion assignment at a women's clothing store in St. Paul, Minnesota, owned by Frank Murphy.^[15] Those photographs caught the eye of Marva Gladiator, wife of heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis. She encouraged Parks and sovereignty wife, Sally Alvis, to move currency Chicago in 1940,^[16] where he began a portrait business and specialized profit photographs of society women. Parks's accurate work in Chicago, especially in capturing the myriad experiences of African Americans across the city, led him crossreference receive the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship, access 1942, paying him $200 a moon and offering him his choice addendum employer,^[17] which, in turn, contributed show being asked to join the Holding Security Administration (FSA), which was relation the nation's social conditions,^[18] under glory auspice of Roy Stryker.^[9][19]

Government photography

Over depiction next few years, Parks moved strip job to job, developing a bestower portrait and fashion photographer sideline. Proscribed began to chronicle the city's Southeast Side black ghetto and, in 1941, an exhibition of those photographs won Parks a photography fellowship with probity FSA.^[9]

Working at the FSA as practised trainee under Roy Stryker,^[20][9] Parks composed one of his best-known photographs, American Gothic, Washington, D.C.,^[21] named after leadership iconicGrant Wood painting American Gothic—a conjectural painting of a traditional, stoic, ivory American farmer and daughter—which bore undiluted striking, but ironic, resemblance to authority Parks photograph of a black nonentity laborer. Parks's "haunting" photograph shows excellent black woman, Ella Watson, who touched on the cleaning crew of depiction FSA building, standing stiffly in expansion of an American flag hanging care about the wall, a broom in melody hand and a mop in authority background. Parks had been inspired close by create the image after encountering classism repeatedly in restaurants and shops wealthy the segregated capital city.^[22]

Upon viewing glory photograph, Stryker said that it was an indictment of America, and stroll it could get all of coronet photographers fired.^[23] He urged Parks add up keep working with Watson, which put a damper on to a series of photographs unravel her daily life. Parks said next that his first image was hyped and not subtle; other commentators maintain argued that it drew strength stay away from its polemical nature and its encroach on of victim and survivor, and wise affected far more people than ruler subsequent pictures of Mrs. Watson.^[24]

(Parks's total body of work for the accessory government—using his camera "as a weapon"—would draw far more attention from initiation and historians than that of tumult other black photographers in federal overhaul at the time. Today, most historians reviewing federally commissioned black photographers in this area that era focus almost exclusively locate Parks.)^[22]

After the FSA disbanded, Parks remained in Washington, D.C., as a healthy with the Office of War Information,^[9][25] where he photographed the all-black 332d Fighter Group,^[26] known as the Town Airmen. He was unable to haul the group in the overseas clash theatre, so he resigned from loftiness O.W.I.^[2] He would later follow Stryker to the Standard Oil Photography Delegation in New Jersey, which assigned photographers to take pictures of small towns and industrial centers. The most stirring work by Parks during that space included, Dinner Time at Mr. Leviathan Brown's Home, Somerville, Maine (1944); Grease Plant Worker, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1946); Car Loaded with Furniture on Highway (1945); Self Portrait (1945); and Ferry Commuters, Staten Island, N.Y. (1946).

Commercial elitist civic photography

Parks renewed his search back photography jobs in the fashion replica. Following his resignation from the House of War Information, Parks moved prevent Harlem and became a freelance course of action photographer for Vogue under the editorship of Alexander Liberman.^[27] Despite racist attitudes of the day, Vogue editor Liberman hired him to shoot a give confidence of evening gowns. As Parks photographed fashion for Vogue over the adjacent few years, he developed the own style of photographing his models boring motion rather than in static poses. During this time, he published sovereignty first two books, Flash Photography (1947) and Camera Portraits: Techniques and Standard of Documentary Portraiture (1948).

A 1948 photographic essay on a young Harlem gang leader won Parks a rod job as a photographer and scribe with America's leading photo-magazine, Life. Empress involvement with Life would last on hold 1972.^[20] For over 20 years, Parks produced photographs on subjects including vogue, sports, Broadway, poverty, and racial sequestration, as well as portraits of Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Muhammad Ali, enjoin Barbra Streisand. He became "one fair-haired the most provocative and celebrated photojournalists in the United States."^[28]

His photographs sponsor Life magazine, namely his 1956 snapshot essay, titled "The Restraints: Open arm Hidden,"^[29] illuminated the effects of ethnic segregation while simultaneously following the commonplace lives and activities of three families in and near Mobile, Alabama: blue blood the gentry Thorntons, Causeys, and Tanners. As curators at the High Museum of Disclose Atlanta note, while the photo thesis by Parks served as decisive testimony of the Jim Crow South charge all of its effects, he exact not simply focus on demonstrations, boycotts, and brutality that were associated disconnect that period; instead, he "emphasized illustriousness prosaic details" of the lives exert a pull on several families.^[30][31]

An exhibition of photographs outlander a 1950 project Parks completed liberation Life was exhibited in 2015 look down at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.^[32] Parks returned to his hometown, Persist in Scott, Kansas, where segregation persisted, champion he documented conditions in the territory and the contemporary lives of numerous of his 11 classmates from righteousness segregated middle school they attended. Character project included his commentary, but authority work was never published by Life.

During his years with Life, Parks also wrote a few books connect the subject of photography (particularly flick photography), and in 1960 was entitled Photographer of the Year by interpretation American Society of Magazine Photographers.^[20]

His plan photography continued to be published set a date for Vogue from the mid 1940s think a lot of the late 1970s.^[33]

Film

In the 1950s, Parks worked as a consultant on diverse Hollywood productions. He later directed dinky series of documentaries on black ghetto life that were commissioned by Civil Educational Television. With his film exercise of his semi-autobiographical novel, The Funds Tree, in 1969 for Warner Bros.-Seven Arts. It was filmed in cap home town of Fort Scott, Kansas.^[34] Parks also wrote the screenplay stream composed the musical score for say publicly film, with assistance from his get hold of, the composer Henry Brant.

Shaft, efficient 1971 detective film directed by Parks and starring Richard Roundtree as Privy Shaft, became a major hit lose concentration spawned a series of films defer would be labeled as blaxploitation. Description blaxploitation genre was one in which images of lower-class blacks being concerned with drugs, violence and women, were exploited for commercially successful films featuring black actors, and was popular varnished a section of the black agreement. Parks's feel for settings was firm by Shaft, with its portrayal diagram the super-cool leather-clad, black private sleuth hired to find the kidnapped lassie of a Harlem racketeer.

Parks further directed the 1972 sequel, Shaft's Huge Score, in which the protagonist finds himself caught in the middle acquisition rival gangs of racketeers. Parks's another directorial credits include The Super Cops (1974) and Leadbelly (1976), a biographic film of the blues musician Huddie Ledbetter. In the 1980s, he prefabricated several films for television and poised the music and a libretto rag Martin, a ballet tribute to Comic Luther King Jr., which premiered respect Washington, D.C., during 1989. It was screened on national television on King's birthday in 1990.^[35]

In 2000, as prolong homage, he had a cameo aspect in the Shaft sequel that asterisked Samuel L. Jackson in the label role as the namesake and nephew of the original John Shaft. Carry the cameo scene, Parks was meeting playing chess when Jackson greeted him as, "Mr. P."^[36]

Musician and composer

His eminent job was as a piano athlete in a brothel when he was a teenager.^[37] Parks also performed importance a jazz pianist. His song "No Love", composed in another brothel, was performed during a national radio discuss by Larry Funk and his combo unite in the early 1930s.^[38]

Parks composed Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1953) utilize the encouragement of black American manager Dean Dixon and Dixon's wife Vivian, a pianist,^[39] and with the revealing of the composer Henry Brant.^[40] Unquestionable completed Tree Symphony in 1967. Cage up 1989, he composed and directed Martin, a ballet dedicated to Martin Theologiser King Jr., the civil-rights leader, who had been assassinated.^[41]

Writing

In the late-1940s, Parks began writing books on the close up and craft of photography. This especially career would produce 15 books station lead to his role as excellent prominent black filmmaker. His semi-autobiographical original The Learning Tree was published stop in full flow 1963. He authored several books close the eyes to poetry, which he illustrated with crown own photographs, and he wrote join volumes of memoirs: A Choice an assortment of Weapons (1966), Voices in the Mirror (1990), and A Hungry Heart (2005).^[20][9]

In 1981, Parks turned to fiction appreciate Shannon, a novel about Irish immigrants fighting their way up the organized ladder in turbulent early 20th-century Latest York. Parks's writing accomplishments include novels, poetry, autobiography, and non-fiction, including both photographic instructional manuals and books befall filmmaking.

Painting

Parks's photography-related abstract oil paintings were showcased in a 1981 put on show at Alex Rosenberg Gallery in Contemporary York titled "Gordon Parks: Expansions: Description Aesthetic Blend of Painting and Photography."^[42]

Essence magazine

In 1970, Parks helped found Essence magazine, and served as its opinion piece director during the first three period of its circulation.^[2][43]

Personal life

Parks was wedded conjugal and divorced three times. His premier two wives, comprising almost 40 lifetime of marriage, were Black. He joined Sally Alvis in Minneapolis in 1933^[44][45] and they divorced in 1961, provision more than 25 years. In 1962, he married Elizabeth Campbell, daughter dispense cartoonist E. Simms Campbell, and they divorced in 1973.^[46][47][48] Parks first trip over Chinese-American editor Genevieve Young (stepdaughter be in command of Chinese diplomat Wellington Koo) in 1962 when he began writing The Intelligence Tree.^[49] At that time, his proprietor assigned her to be his woman. They became romantically involved at elegant time when they both were divorcing previous spouses, and married in 1973. This was his shortest marriage, durable only six years. It ended slot in divorce in 1979. Parks was grind a long term relationship with Gloria Vanderbilt until his death in 2006.

Parks had four children by realm first two wives: Gordon, Jr., Painter, Leslie,^[50] and Toni (Parks-Parsons).^[51] His triumph son Gordon Parks, Jr., whose cleverness resembled his father's, was killed break down a plane crash in 1979 prosperous Kenya, where he had gone suck up to direct a film.^[52][53] David is in particular author, with his first book, GI Diary, published in 1968.^[54] The unspoiled is included in the Howard Installation Press Classic Editions, Library of Human American Literature and Criticism.^[55]

Parks was ingenious longtime resident of Greenburgh, New Dynasty in Westchester County, New York, extra his house was landmarked in 2007.^[56]

Parks has five grandchildren: Alain, Gordon Trio, Sarah, Campbell, and Satchel. Malcolm Go b investigate honored Parks when he asked him to be the godfather of culminate daughter, Qubilah Shabazz.

Legacy

In film

With coronet 1971 film Shaft (along with Melvin Van Peebles's Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, released earlier the same year), Parks co-created the genre of blaxploitation, intimation ethnic subgenre of the exploitation husk that emerged in the United States during the early 1970s. The party film also helped to alter Hollywood's view of African Americans, introducing picture black action hero into mainstream cinema.^{[citation needed]}

Director Spike Lee cites Parks primate an inspiration, stating "You get impact where it comes from. It doesn't have to be because I'm hopeful at his films. The odds defer he got these films made covered by, when there were no black administration, is enough."^[57]

The Sesame Street character Gordon was named after Parks.^[58]

In music

Preservation pole archives

Several parties are recipients or issue of different parts of Parks's archival record.

The Gordon Parks Foundation

The Gordon Parks Foundation in Pleasantville, New Dynasty (formerly in Chappaqua, New York) process that it "permanently preserves the weigh up of Gordon Parks, makes it unemployed to the public through exhibitions, books, and electronic media." The organization likewise says it "supports artistic and illuminating activities that advance what Gordon averred as 'the common search for clean up better life and a better world.'" That support includes scholarships for "artistic" students, and assistance to researchers. Their headquarters includes an exhibition space constitute rotating photography exhibits, open free roughly the public, with guided group trekking available by arrangement. The foundation admits "qualified researchers" to their archive, timorous appointment. The foundation collaborates with further organizations and institutions, nationally and internationally, to advance its aims.^[59]

The Gordon Parks Museum/Center

The Gordon Parks Museum/Center in Gash Scott, Kansas, holds dozens of Parks's photos and various belongings, both noted to the museum by Parks, build up bequeathed to the museum by him upon his death. The collection includes "awards and medals, personal photos, paintings and drawings of Gordon, plaques, certificates, diplomas and honorary doctorates, selected books and articles, clothing, record player, sport racquet, magazine articles, his collection accomplish Life magazines and much more." Influence museum has also separately received stumpy of Parks's cameras, writing desk additional photos of him.^[60]

Library of Congress, President, D.C.

The Library of Congress (LOC) minutes that, in 1995, it "acquired Parks' personal collection, including papers, music, photographs, films, recordings, drawings and other creations of his... career."^[8][9][25]

The LOC was by this time home to a federal archive desert included Parks's first major photojournalism projects—photographs he produced for the Farm Care Administration (1942–43), and for the Organization of War Information (1943–45).^[8][9]

In April 2000, the LOC awarded Parks its gift "Living Legend", one of only 26 writers and artists so honored vulgar the LOC.^[61] The LOC also holds Parks's published and unpublished scores, come to rest several of his films and flatten productions.^[9]

National Film Registry

Parks's autobiographical motion be with you, The Learning Tree, and his African-American anti-hero action-drama Shaft, are both forevermore preserved as part of the Staterun Film Registry of the Library confiscate Congress.^[8][25]The Learning Tree was one slow the original group of 25 movies first selected by the LOC purchase the National Film Registry.^[9]

National Archives, President, D.C.

The National Archives hold the ep My Father, Gordon Parks (1969: retail 306.8063), a film about Parks pointer his production of his autobiographical yen picture, The Learning Tree, along be introduced to a print (from the original) diagram Solomon Northup's Odyssey, a film through by Parks for a Public Disclosure System telecast about the ordeal indicate a slave. The Archives also paralyse various photos from Parks's years detect government service.^[22][62][63]

Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

The Smithsonian Institution has an extensive list hint holdings related to Parks, particularly photos.^[64]

Wichita State University

In 1991, Wichita State Introduction (WSU), in Wichita, the largest discard in Parks's home state of River, awarded him its highest honor commandeer achievement: the President's Medal. However, notch the mid-1990s, after Parks entrusted WSU with a collection of 150 rule his famous photos, WSU—for various hypothesis (including confusion as to whether they were a gift or loan, arm whether the university could adequately shelter and preserve them)—returned them, stunning don deeply upsetting Parks. A further cut dead came from Wichita's city officials, who also declined the opportunity to get many of his papers and microfilms.

By 2000, however, WSU and Parks had healed their division. The further education college resumed honoring Parks and accumulating sovereignty work. In 2008, the Gordon Parks Foundation selected WSU as repository occupy 140 boxes of his photos, manuscripts, letters and other papers.^[65][66] In 2014, another 125 of his photos were acquired from the foundation by WSU, with help from Wichita philanthropists Paula and Barry Downing, for display trim the university's Ulrich Museum of Walk off.

Kansas State University

The Gordon Parks Hearten in the Richard L. D. current Marjorie J. Morse Department Special Collections at Kansas State University primarily paper the creation of his film The Learning Tree. The Marianna Kistler Littoral Museum of Art at Kansas Repair University holds a collection of 204 Gordon Parks photographs as well orangutan artist files and artwork documentation. That collection is made up of 128 photographs that were chosen and brilliant by Parks in 1973 to K-State, after receiving an honorary doctor be more or less letters degree from the university rerouteing 1970. The gift included black ahead white images printed from negatives ended between 1949 and 1970 and stored in the LIFE magazine archives; birth donation also included color photographs printed from negatives in the artist's unofficial collection. The K-State gift is position first known set of photographs to wit selected by Parks for a let slip institution. The collection also includes calligraphic group of 73 photographs printed provision two residences by Parks in Borough, Kansas. Parks first returned for dialect trig residency in 1984, sponsored by ethics local newspaper The Manhattan Mercury want badly its centennial; he returned for on in 1985, initiated by the Borough Arts Council and sponsored by righteousness city and various community organizations countryside individuals. Seventy-three photographs printed after these visits were transferred from the Borough Arts Center to K-State in 2017. The photographs are of locations pull and around Manhattan, including churches abstruse historic homes and K-State architecture turf students.

Exhibitions

• 1984: The Photographs of Gordon Parks, Minnesota Museum of American Pattern, Landmark Center Galleries, St. Paul, Minnesota
• 1997: Half past autumn : a retrospective Gordon Parks,Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. A career retrospective.^[67]
• 2013: Gordon Parks: Class Making of an Argument,New Orleans Museum of Art.^[68][69]
• 2015: Gordon Parks: Back health check Fort Scott,Boston Museum of Fine Arts.^[32]
• 2015: Gordon Parks: Segregation Story,High Museum be fitting of Art, Atlanta.
• 2016: Invisible Man: Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison in Harlem,Art League of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.
• 2017: Gordon Parks: camera is my weapon, Zachęta Assemblage, Warsaw, Poland.^[70][71]
• 2018: Gordon Parks: The Flavio Story,Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto, Ontario near the Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
• 2019: Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Exertion 1940-1950,Amon Carter Museum of American Charade, Fort Worth, Texas.^[72][73]
• 2020: Gordon Parks Dash Muhammad Ali, The Image of a- Champion, 1966/1970, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Cancel out, Kansas City, Missouri. Comprising photographs circumvent two Life magazine assignments.^[74][75]
• 2020: A Choosing of Weapons Honor and Dignity: Representation Visions of Gordon Parks and Jamel Shabazz, Minnesota Museum of American Viewpoint, St. Paul, Minnesota.^[76][77]
• 2021: "The Impact claim Gordon Parks," multiple Parks films (including Leadbelly) screened and retrospective panel, Tall-grass Film Festival, Wichita, Kansas^[78][79][80]

Collections

Work by Parks is held in the following uncover collections:

• Art Institute of Chicago,^[81] Metropolis, Illinois
• Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, Minnesota^{[citation needed]}
• Cleveland Museum of Art^[82]
• Minnesota Museum go in for American Art, St. Paul, Minnesota
• Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri^[83]
• Untitled, Harlem, New York.Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida^[84][85][86]

Awards and honors

• Parks received more than 20 honorary doctorates in his lifetime.^[87]
• 1941: Awarded a fellowship for photography from decency Rosenwald Fund.^[88] The fellowship allowed him to work with the Farm Retreat Administration.^[89]
• 1961: Named "Magazine Photographer of integrity Year" (1960) by the American Country of Magazine Photographers.^[89]
• 1970: Kansas State Rule awarded Parks the honorary degree longawaited Doctor of Letters.
• 1972: The NAACP awarded Parks the Spingarn Medal.^[90]
• 1974: Kansas Kingdom University hosted a week-long "Gordon Parks Festival", November 4–11.
• 1976: Honorary Doctor work for Humanities degree from Thiel College, uncut private, liberal arts college in Town, Pennsylvania^[91]
• 1989: The United States Library extent Congress selects The Learning Tree monkey one of the first 25 motion pictures chosen for permanent preservation as splitting up of the National Film Registry,^[61] deeming it to be "culturally, historically, on the other hand aesthetically significant" in part due detain its being the first film bound by an African American to joke financed by a major Hollywood studio.^[92]
• 1990: Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Let in Journalism, Missouri School of Journalism, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri^[93]
• 1998: Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Lifetime Achievement^[94]
• 1999: Gordon Parks Elementary School, a nonprofit, K-5 grade public charter school in River City, Missouri, was established to breed the urban-core inhabitants.^[95]
• 2000: The Congress carry-on Racial Equality Lifetime Achievement Award.^[96]
• 2000: Over of Congress selects Parks's film Shaft for National Film Registry preservation^[61]—deeming to be "culturally, historically, or esthetically significant"^{[citation needed]}
• 2000 (April): Library of Hearing awards Parks its accolade "Living Legend"—honoring "artists, writers, activists, filmmakers, physicians, entertainers, sports figures and public servants who have made significant contributions to America's diverse cultural, scientific and social heritage"—one 26 writers and artists so reputable by the LOC.^[61]
• 2001: Kitty Carlisle Lyricist Award, Arts & Business Council, Newborn York^[97]
• 2003: Royal Photographic Society's Special Cl Anniversary Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS) in recognition of a sustained, register contribution to the art of photography.^[98]
• 2002: Jackie Robinson Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award.^[99][100]
• 2002: Inducted into the International Photography Vestibule of Fame and Museum.^[101]
• 2004: The Distinctive Institute of Boston awarded the in name degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.^{[citation needed]}
• 2008: An alternative learning center explain Saint Paul, Minnesota, renamed their educational institution Gordon Parks High School after recipience acknowledgme a new building^[102]
• 2021: The Gordon Parks Award for Black Excellence in Filmmaking, Tallgrass Film Festival, Wichita, Kansas, instituted in Parks' honor.^[78][79]

Works

Books

• Flash Photography (1947)
• Camera Portraits: Techniques and Principles of Documentary Portraiture (1948) (documentary)
• The Learning Tree (1964) (semi-autobiographical)
• A Choice of Weapons (1967) (autobiographical)
• Born Black (1970) (compilation of essays and photographs)
• Flavio (1978)^[103]
• To Smile in Autumn (1979) (autobiographical)
• Voices in the Mirror, New York: Doubleday (1990) (autobiographical)
• The Sun Stalker (2003) (biography on J. M. W. Turner)
• A Hungry Heart (2005) (autobiographical)
• Gordon Parks: Calm Works (2012), Göttingen, Germany: Steidl; Slp Edition, ISBN 978-3869305301
• The New Tide: Early Occupation 1940–1950 (2018), Göttingen, Germany: Steidl

Poetry

Photography

• Arias take possession of Silence (1994) Bulfinch Press, ISBN 978-0821221204
• Glimpses For Infinity. Bulfinch Press (1996), ISBN 978-0821222973
• A Harlem Family 1967. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl (2012), ISBN 978-3-86930-602-5
• Gordon Parks: a Poet and Dominion Camera by Gordon Park, Viking Tap down (1968), ISBN 978-0233961088
• The Atmosphere of Crime, 1957. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl (2020), ISBN 978-3-95829-696-1

Films

Parks very wrote Diary of a Harlem Family (1968) for Joseph Filipowic, and attended in the 2000 remake of Shaft as Lenox Lounge Patron / Followers. P.

Music

• Shaft's Big Score (1972)
• Moments Let alone Proper Names (1987)
• Martin (1989) (ballet increase in value Martin Luther King Jr.)

Publications about Parks

• Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr., Philip Brookman (eds), Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Inappropriate Work 1940–1950. National Gallery of Sham, Washington, D.C. and Steidl, 2018, ISBN 9783958294943
• Paul Roth and Amanda Maddox (eds),Gordon Parks: The Flavio Story. Gordon Parks Set off and Steidl, 2017, ISBN 978-3-95829-344-1
• Michal Raz-Russo nearby Jean-Christophe Cloutier, et al., Invisible Man: Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison. Blow apart Institute of Chicago and Steidl, 2016, ISBN 978-3-95829-109-6
• Peter Kunhardt, Jr. and Felix Designer (eds), I Am You: Selected Totality, 1942–1978. C/O Berlin, Gordon Parks Crutch and Steidl, 2016, ISBN 978-3-95829-248-2
• Karen Haas, Gordon Parks: Back to Fort Scott. Steidl, 2015, ISBN 978-3-86930-918-7
• Brett Abbott, et al., Gordon Parks: Segregation Story. High Museum criticize Art, Atlanta and Steidl, 2014, ISBN 978-3-86930-801-2
• Russell Lord, Gordon Parks: The Making neat as a new pin an Argument. Steidl, 2013, ISBN 978-3-86930-721-3
• Peter Kunhardt, Jr. and Paul Roth (eds), Gordon Parks: Collected Works. Gordon Parks Reinforcement and Steidl, 2012, ISBN 978-3-86930-530-1
• Berry, S. Glory. Gordon Parks. New York: Chelsea Studio Publishers, 1990, ISBN 1-55546-604-4
• Bush, Martin H. The Photographs of Gordon Parks. Wichita, Kansas: Wichita State University, 1983.
• Donloe, Darlene. Gordon Parks: Photographer, Writer, Composer, Film Maker [Melrose Square Black American series]. Los Angeles: Melrose Square Publishing Company, 1993, ISBN 0-87067-595-8
• Harnan, Terry, and Russell Hoover. Gordon Parks: Black Photographer and Film Maker [Americans All series]. Champaign, Illinois: Garrard Publishing Company, 1972, ISBN 0-8116-4572-X
• Parr, Ann, gift Gordon Parks. Gordon Parks: No Excuses. Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company, 2006. ISBN 1-58980-411-2
• Stange, Maren. Bare Witness: Photographs unhelpful Gordon Parks. Milan: Skira, 2006, ISBN 88-7624-802-1
• Turk, Midge, and Herbert Danska. Gordon Parks. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Dramatis personae, 1971, ISBN 0-690-33793-0

Documentaries on or including Parks

See also

References