Gordon Parks & The New Tide

What Makes It Great? / Featured / February 25, 2020

“We are with the new tide.
We stand at the crossroads
We watch each new procession.
The hot wires carry urgent appeals.
Print compels us.
Voices are speaking.
Men are moving!
And we shall be with them.”

Richard Wright, 12 Million Black Voices, 1941

By Elin Spring

How is creativity born? While I doubt we will be able to answer that question in my lifetime, it can be enthralling to ponder the mysterious connections between formative experiences and inventive, inspiring expressions of an artistic powerhouse. This is what the National Gallery of Art embarked upon when assembling the earliest work of trailblazing African American photographer Gordon Parks. Their comprehensive traveling exhibit, Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940-1950 is now on view at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, MA through April 26^th, 2020.

Gordon Parks
Marva Trotter Louis, Chicago, Illinois, 1941
gelatin silver print
image: 24.13 × 20 cm (9 1/2 × 7 7/8 in.) sheet: 25.4 × 20.64 cm (10 × 8 1/8 in.)
The Gordon Parks Foundation

During the 1940s, Gordon Parks (1912–2006) swiftly evolved from a self-taught photographer making portraits and documenting everyday life in Saint Paul and Chicago into a versatile, highly sought professional in NYC. Constantly on the move, he worked for organizations like the Farm Security Administration (FSA), Office of War Information (OWI), and the Standard Oil Photography Project, as well as shooting editorial stories for magazines like Ebony and Life and fashion for Glamour. Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940-1950 purports to “reveal how these (experiences) helped shape his groundbreaking style.” But I beg to differ. Although this large show features enlightening aspects of Parks’ life, it actually illuminates how tenaciously he directed his trajectory rather than how his early experiences influenced his photographic style.

Gordon Parks
Off On My Own, 1948
Gelatin silver print, image: 11.75 x 11.75 cm (4 5/8 x 4 5/8 in.), sheet: 13.02 x 13.02 cm (5 1/8 x 5 1/8 in.)
The Gordon Parks Foundation
Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation

Parks’ earliest works reveal that his personality was emblazoned on all his imagery and that his dogged, tireless work ethic honed an exceptional level of skill and versatility. Parks was a consummate professional, self-described as “an objective reporter with a subjective heart.” He possessed a passionate personal agenda to advance justice and dignity for African Americans, succeeding through political savvy and personal charisma to gain acceptance into previously barred organizations. Parks broke the color barrier in 1948, when Life magazine hired him as its first African American staff photographer.

Gordon Parks
Crude oil, fuel oil, gas oil, range oil and gasoline pipelines leading from the waterfront to
the Everett refinery. Everett, Massachusetts., May 1944
Gelatin silver print, image: 23.18 x 19.05 cm (9 1/8 x 7 1/2 in.) sheet: 23.18 x 28.26 cm (9 1/8 x 11 1/8 in.)
Standard Oil (New Jersey) Collection, Photographic Archives, University of Louisville Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation

By dint of size alone, this exhibit of Parks’ earliest work merits a visit, but the content reflects the highly variable nature of this stage in his career, rendering the exhibit somewhat uneven. In commercial public relations work for the Standard Oil Company, Parks attempted to make oil drums and industrial laborers engaging, with varying success. In editorial pieces for the FSA and OWI, his abiding interest in ending racial injustice is more evident and absorbing, best illustrated in his photographs of charwoman Ella Watson.

Gordon Parks
Washington, D.C. Government charwoman, July 1942
Gelatin silver print mounted to board with typewritten caption, sheet: 23.7 x 18.2 cm (9 5/16 x 7 3/16 in.) mount: 29 x 24 cm (11 7/16 x 9 7/16 in.)
Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Photograph, free from copyright claim.

Gordon Parks
Washington, D.C. Mrs. Ella Watson, a government charwoman, with three grandchildren and her adopted daughter, July 1942
gelatin silver print
sheet: 18.3 × 23.7 cm (7 3/16 × 9 5/16 in.) mount: 24.1 × 29.2 cm (9 1/2 × 11 1/2 in.)
Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Gordon Parks showed many signs of advancing his personal mission through a shrewd use of symbolism. While the exhibit curators chose not to theorize about Parks’ use of metaphor in his early photographs, my own observations suggest a few: angles emphasized movement, creating dynamic compositions and perhaps channeling aspirations of upward mobility; framing in doorways, windows and mirrors represented barriers and opportunities; isolated figures were employed to simultaneously convey segregation and empathy, often using lighting to create an atmosphere of oppression while emphasizing dignity.

Gordon Parks
Washington, D.C. Young boy standing in the doorway of his home on Seaton Road in the northwest section. His leg was cut off by a streetcar while he was playing in the street., June 1942
gelatin silver print, printed later
image: 50.8 × 40.6 cm (20 × 16 in.)
The Gordon Parks Foundation

Gordon Parks
Pittsburgh, Pa. The cooper’s plant at the Penola, Inc. grease plant, where large drums and containers are reconditioned, March 1944
Gelatin silver print on board with typed caption, sheet: 23.9 x 19.1 cm (9 7/16 x 7 1/2 in.) mount: 29 x 24 cm (11 7/16 x 9 7/16 in.)
Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation

Gordon Parks
Anacostia, D.C. Frederick Douglass housing project. Mother watching her children as she prepares the evening meal, June 1942
Gelatin silver print, image: 25.4 x 20.3 cm (10 x 8 in.)
Photography Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations
Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation

Part of Parks’ genius was the way he gained sympathies by drawing parallels between the humanity and dignity of the races, imploring with his lens the acknowledgment of similarities. Through this assuaging style, Parks advocated for acceptance of blacks into mainstream American culture. Perhaps the best illustration of this approach is “Return to Fort Scott,” an emotionally gripping editorial project Parks completed for Life magazine in 1950, when he returned to his segregated birthplace on the eve of Brown v. Board of Education. This was the subject of a fascinating 2015 MFA, Boston exhibit and accompanying Steidl publication (curated and written by Karen Haas, MFA, Boston’s Lane Curator of Photographs), but is only briefly addressed in Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940-1950. Taken together, Gordon Parks’ illustrious 60-year career becomes both a chronicle of groundbreaking accomplishments and an engrossing personal story.

“Husband and Wife, Sunday Morning, Detroit, Michigan, 1950” by Gordon Parks from Back to Fort Scott (courtesy of The Gordon Parks Foundation and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).

For more information about Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940-1950, go to: https://addison.andover.edu/Exhibitions/GordonParks/Pages/default.aspx?in=On+View+Now

To read our review of the MFA, Boston show “Return to Fort Scott”, go to: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/gordon-parks-back-to-fort-scott-at-museum-of-fine-arts-boston/

To see and/or order the book “Back to Fort Scott” (Steidl, 2015), go to: https://www.photoeye.com/bookstore/citation.cfm?catalog=DS406%20&i=9783869309187&i2=