Gordon Parks in Spring
Gordon Parks died this week at the highly regarded age of 93. Ninety-three, or any number a few steps beyond ninety seems like a good, rich age at which to call it a day, and I don’t feel sadness for his passing. Lives of such richness should not be mourned.
His death gives me the occasion to reflect on the importance our first official meeting. I didn’t know him through Life magazine. I was not yet born, and then too young to read words during his tenure as Life’s first black photographer. Thinking back into those hazy days of scattered childhood memories, I think I can pull an image of his book, The Learning Tree sitting on my grandma’s coffee table. Any book Grandma was reading, or thought interesting, registered as boring to my young mind. At some point I learned he was a photographer—maybe came across his name in a textbook, or a text on African American culture—and was interested in seeing his work.
Some ten years later we “met” at the venerable Corcoran Gallery of Art through the retrospective “Half Past Autumn.” It was an intentional, but reluctant meeting, akin to attending a party hosted by someone you don’t like with the singular possibility of falling in love with someone who will be in attendance. Fond of almost all of DC’s museums, the stodgy, snobby Corcoran was an exception. Founder William Wilson Corcoran and I differed on the definition of “fine art.” His “fine” exemplified my “boring.”
Yet interests intersected with the elegantly powerful Gordon Parks, whose brown, wrinkled skin I found familiar and his eyes penetrating.
The title was intriguing—“Half Past Autumn.” What did it mean? Besides being an author, what was he about? Upon seeing the work, I instantly knew. The black and white photos of Washington, DC, of Brazil, of Chicago, made the gritty beautiful. He later said in an interview that he came to love all of his subjects so that they weren’t objects on the other end of his lens, but people cared for and wanted to represent with dignity. I looked around DC and its broken glass, leave-less trees and lonely eyes in a different frame. Of mind.
I’ve always loved cities, always loved the broad boulevard that is Pennsylvania Avenue, the secret life of Half Street, the effortless Connecticut Avenue. Gordon Parks showed me how to see them. Harlem, Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore. The poverty, restlessness, angst, loyalty, pride... All of those realities were respected in a world that valued privilege and gloss.
I saw Parks also photographed famous Americans of black culture: Mohammed Ali, Langston Hughes, Loraine Hansberry. I vaguely remember seeing the other photos of famous black Americans, people I’d seen before, but this time the photos were taken by a black photographer of note. That meant something to me. Not that Mr. Hughes looked any different, more debonair, simply more…
At the time, not many of my friends were so familiar with Parks. Sophomores in college, we were just taking “Intro to African American Studies”, and Parks was later in the semester. I didn’t have the excited “Yo! Have you heard” conversation like we did about Lauryn Hill’s new album, “Miseducation” or the LL Cool J/Canibus battle. Privately, I tucked Gordon Parks and my moments with his work as pivotal.
Parks speaks with Phil Ponce of PBS about his life and work.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/jan-june98/gordon_1-6.html
Wil Haygood’s warm tribute to Gordon Parks
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/03/08/AR2006030802486.html?sub=AR
Curatorial statement on Parks’s work from exhibit, "Half Past Autumn"
http://www.tfaoi.com/newsm1/n1m673.htm
His death gives me the occasion to reflect on the importance our first official meeting. I didn’t know him through Life magazine. I was not yet born, and then too young to read words during his tenure as Life’s first black photographer. Thinking back into those hazy days of scattered childhood memories, I think I can pull an image of his book, The Learning Tree sitting on my grandma’s coffee table. Any book Grandma was reading, or thought interesting, registered as boring to my young mind. At some point I learned he was a photographer—maybe came across his name in a textbook, or a text on African American culture—and was interested in seeing his work.
Some ten years later we “met” at the venerable Corcoran Gallery of Art through the retrospective “Half Past Autumn.” It was an intentional, but reluctant meeting, akin to attending a party hosted by someone you don’t like with the singular possibility of falling in love with someone who will be in attendance. Fond of almost all of DC’s museums, the stodgy, snobby Corcoran was an exception. Founder William Wilson Corcoran and I differed on the definition of “fine art.” His “fine” exemplified my “boring.”
Yet interests intersected with the elegantly powerful Gordon Parks, whose brown, wrinkled skin I found familiar and his eyes penetrating.
The title was intriguing—“Half Past Autumn.” What did it mean? Besides being an author, what was he about? Upon seeing the work, I instantly knew. The black and white photos of Washington, DC, of Brazil, of Chicago, made the gritty beautiful. He later said in an interview that he came to love all of his subjects so that they weren’t objects on the other end of his lens, but people cared for and wanted to represent with dignity. I looked around DC and its broken glass, leave-less trees and lonely eyes in a different frame. Of mind.
I’ve always loved cities, always loved the broad boulevard that is Pennsylvania Avenue, the secret life of Half Street, the effortless Connecticut Avenue. Gordon Parks showed me how to see them. Harlem, Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore. The poverty, restlessness, angst, loyalty, pride... All of those realities were respected in a world that valued privilege and gloss.
I saw Parks also photographed famous Americans of black culture: Mohammed Ali, Langston Hughes, Loraine Hansberry. I vaguely remember seeing the other photos of famous black Americans, people I’d seen before, but this time the photos were taken by a black photographer of note. That meant something to me. Not that Mr. Hughes looked any different, more debonair, simply more…
At the time, not many of my friends were so familiar with Parks. Sophomores in college, we were just taking “Intro to African American Studies”, and Parks was later in the semester. I didn’t have the excited “Yo! Have you heard” conversation like we did about Lauryn Hill’s new album, “Miseducation” or the LL Cool J/Canibus battle. Privately, I tucked Gordon Parks and my moments with his work as pivotal.
Parks speaks with Phil Ponce of PBS about his life and work.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/jan-june98/gordon_1-6.html
Wil Haygood’s warm tribute to Gordon Parks
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/03/08/AR2006030802486.html?sub=AR
Curatorial statement on Parks’s work from exhibit, "Half Past Autumn"
http://www.tfaoi.com/newsm1/n1m673.htm
posted by Rhonda Henderson at 2:15 PM
1 Comments:
As I said in my blog, we lost a Giant. There was no other artisit in the last 100 years as accomplished as him in so many differnt mediums. I was very-very sad to hear of his passing. Not enough was done for his passing if you ask me. People tried to say, Andy was just as great an artist...I laugh...pfft. Andy couldn't hold Gordon's jockstrap. Nuff said.
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