THE CAT WHO WOULDN'T COP OUT:

Gordon Parks, a Master of the Camera, Dies at 93 (ANDY GRUNDBERG, 3/08/06, NY Times)

Gordon Parks, the photographer, filmmaker, writer and composer who used his prodigious, largely self-taught talents to chronicle the African-American experience and to retell his own personal history, died yesterday at his home in Manhattan. He was 93.

His death was announced by Genevieve Young, his former wife and executor. Gordon Parks was the first African-American to work as a staff photographer for Life magazine and the first black artist to produce and direct a major Hollywood film, "The Learning Tree," in 1969.

He developed a large following as a photographer for Life for more than 20 years, and by the time he was 50 he ranked among the most influential image makers of the postwar years. In the 1960's he began to write memoirs, novels, poems and screenplays, which led him to directing films. In addition to "The Learning Tree," he directed the popular action films "Shaft" and "Shaft's Big Score!" In 1970 he helped found Essence magazine and was its editorial director from 1970 to 1973. [...]

Much of his literary energy was channeled into memoirs, in which he mined incidents from his adolescence and early career in an effort to find deeper meaning in them. His talent for telling vivid stories was used to good effect in "The Learning Tree," which he wrote first as a novel and later converted into a screenplay. This was a coming-of-age story about a young black man whose childhood plainly resembled the author's. It was well received when it was published in 1963 and again in 1969, when Warner Brothers released the film version. Mr. Parks wrote, produced and directed the film and wrote the music for its soundtrack. He was also the cinematographer.

"Gordon Parks was like the Jackie Robinson of film," Donald Faulkner, the director of the New York State Writers Institute, once said. "He broke ground for a lot of people — Spike Lee, John Singleton."

Mr. Parks's subsequent films, "Shaft" (1971) and "Shaft's Big Score!" (1972), were prototypes for what became known as blaxploitation films. Among Mr. Park's other accomplishments were a second novel, four books of memoirs, four volumes of poetry, a ballet and several orchestral scores. As a photographer Mr. Parks combined a devotion to documentary realism with a knack for making his own feelings self-evident. The style he favored was derived from the Depression-era photography project of the Farm Security Administration, which he joined in 1942 at the age of 30.

Perhaps his best-known photograph, which he titled "American Gothic," was taken during his brief time with the agency; it shows a black cleaning woman named Ella Watson standing stiffly in front of an American flag, a mop in one hand and a broom in the other. Mr. Parks wanted the picture to speak to the existence of racial bigotry and inequality in the nation's capital. He was in an angry mood when he asked the woman to pose, having earlier been refused service at a clothing store, a movie theater and a restaurant.

MORE:
Gordon Parks, an American legend (Jym Wilson, 3/07/06, USA TODAY)
Gordon Parks' unique American perspective (Maria Puente and Jym Wilson, 3/07/06, USA TODAY)
American Classic: Grant Wood and the meaning of his art. (Paul A. Cantor, 03/06/2006, Weekly Standard)
On the issue of race, Biel eventually gets around to noting what might seem obvious from the beginning: that the figures in American Gothic are both white. But instead of accusing Wood of racism, Biel uses the occasion to discuss one of the many interesting variations on American Gothic, a photograph with the same title taken by the African-American artist Gordon Parks in Washington in 1942. In front of an enormous American flag hanging on the wall at the Farm Security Administration, Parks posed a black cleaning woman named Ella Watson--posed her in a way that clearly calls to mind the Grant Wood painting. According to Biel, this photo made an important statement: "The normative whiteness of the now iconic American Gothic did not go unrecognized and unchallenged."