Gordon Parks, the camera as weapon
« American photographer and filmmaker (1912-2006), Life and Vogue's first Black staff photographer, civil rights activist with a camera. »
Born in Kansas in 1912, the youngest of fifteen children, Parks bought his first camera for $7.50 in a pawn shop. In 1948 he became the first Black staff photographer at Life, where he remained for over twenty years. American Gothic (1942) — Ella Watson before a flag — laid out his project from the start.
Stories on Harlem gangs, A Harlem Family (1968), portraits of Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali and Stokely Carmichael — Parks documented Black America with authority. He also shot Vogue covers and photographed Paris, proving he could work in any register.
In 1971 he directed Shaft, the first blockbuster by a Black filmmaker, opening the way for all of blaxploitation. A composer, novelist and poet, Parks liked to say his camera was his weapon against poverty and racism. He died at 93, one of the visual consciences of 20th-century America.