Gordon Parks

This article is about the photographer. For the Scottish sports journalist and former footballer, see Gordon Parks (footballer).

Gordon Parks
Parks at the Civil Rights March on Washington, 1963
Born	Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks (1912-11-30)November 30, 1912 Fort Scott, Kansas, United States
Died	New York City, New York, United States
Known for	Photographer writer musician film director composer
Notable work	Life photographic essays Shaft The Learning Tree Solomon Northup's Odyssey
Awards	NAACP Image Award (2003) PGA Oscar Micheaux Award (1993) National Medal of Arts (1988) Spingarn Medal (1972)

Gordon Parks (November 30, 1912 – March 7, 2006), born into rural poverty, was a noted African-American photographer, musician, writer and film director, who became prominent in U.S. documentary photojournalism in the 1940s through 1970s—particularly in issues of civil rights, poverty and African-Americans—and in glamour photography. As the first famous pioneer among black filmmakers, he was first African-American to produce and direct major motion pictures—developing films that "told the story" of slaves and struggling black Americans, and creating the "blaxploitation" genre. He is best remembered for his iconic photos of poor Americans during the 1940s (taken for a federal government project), for his photographic essays for Life magazine, and as the director of the 1971 film Shaft. A versatile artist, he also had achievements as an author, poet and composer.

Early life

Parks was born in Fort Scott, Kansas, the son of Sarah (née Ross) and Jackson Parks, Nov. 30, 1912. Allen, Erin, He was the last child born to them. His father was a farmer who grew corn, beets, turnips, potatoes, collard greens, and tomatoes. They also had a few ducks, chickens, and hogs.

He attended a segregated elementary school. The town was too small to afford a separate high school that would facilitate segregation of the secondary school, but blacks were not allowed to play sports or attend school social activities, and they were discouraged from developing any aspirations for higher education. Parks related in a documentary on his life that his teacher told him that his desire to go to college would be a waste of money.

When Parks was eleven years old, three white boys threw him into the Marmaton River, knowing he couldn't swim. He had the presence of mind to duck underwater so they wouldn't see him make it to land.

His mother died when he was fourteen. He spent his last night at the family home sleeping beside his mother's coffin, seeking not only solace, but a way to face his own fear of death. Soon after, he was sent to live with relatives. That situation ended with Parks being turned out onto the street to fend for himself at age 15. Struggling to survive, he worked in brothels, and as a singer, piano player, bus boy, traveling waiter, and semi-pro basketball player.

In 1929, he briefly worked in a gentlemen's club, the Minnesota Club. There he not only observed the trappings of success, but was able to read many books from the club library. When the Wall Street Crash of 1929 brought an end to the club, he jumped a train to Chicago, where he managed to land a job in a flophouse.

Career

Photography

While working as a waiter in a railroad dining car, he began seeing the portfolios of photographers in picture magazines, and decided to become a photographer.

At the age of 25, Parks was struck by photographs of migrant workers in a magazine and bought his first camera, a Voigtländer Brillant, for $12.50 at a Seattle, Washington, pawnshop. The photography clerks who developed Parks' first roll of film, applauded his work and prompted him to seek a fashion assignment at a women's clothing store in St. Paul, Minnesota, that was owned by Frank Murphy. Those photographs caught the eye of Marva Louis, wife of heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis. She encouraged Parks to move to Chicago in 1940, where he began a portrait business and specialized in photographs of society women. Parks's photographic work in Chicago, especially in capturing the myriad experiences of African Americans across the city, led him to receive the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship, which, in turn, contributed to being asked to join the Farm Security Administration under the auspice of Roy Striker

Over the next few years, Parks moved from job to job, developing a freelance portrait and fashion photographer sideline. He began to chronicle the city's South Side black ghetto and, in 1941, an exhibition of those photographs won Parks a photography fellowship with the Farm Security Administration (FSA).

American Gothic, Washington, D.C. – a well-known photograph by Parks

Working at the FSA as a trainee under Roy Stryker, Parks created one of his best-known photographs, American Gothic, Washington, D.C., named after the iconic Grant Wood painting, American Gothic—a legendary painting of a traditional, stoic, white American farm couple—which bore a striking, but ironic, resemblance to Parks' photograph of a black menial laborer. Parks "haunting" photograph shows a black woman, Ella Watson, who worked on the cleaning crew of the FSA building, standing stiffly in front of an American flag hanging on the wall, a broom in one hand and a mop in the background. Parks had been inspired to create the image after encountering racism repeatedly in restaurants and shops in the segregated capital city.

A later photograph in the FSA series by Parks shows Ella Watson and her family

Upon viewing the photograph, Stryker said that it was an indictment of America, and that it could get all of his photographers fired. He urged Parks to keep working with Watson, however, which led to a series of photographs of her daily life. Parks said later that his first image was overdone and not subtle; other commentators have argued that it drew strength from its polemical nature and its duality of victim and survivor, and so has affected far more people than his subsequent pictures of Mrs. Watson. (However, Parks overall body of work for the federal government—using his camera "as a weapon"—would draw far more attention from contemporaries and historians than that of all other black photographers in federal service at the time. Today, most historians reviewing federally commissioned black photographers of that era focus almost exclusively on Parks).

After the FSA disbanded, Parks remained in Washington, D.C. as a correspondent with the Office of War Information, where he photographed the all-black 332d Fighter Group. He was unable to follow the group in the overseas war theatre, so he resigned from the O.W.I. He would later follow Stryker to the Standard Oil Photography Project in New Jersey, which assigned photographers to take pictures of small towns and industrial centers. The most striking work by Parks during that period included, Dinner Time at Mr. Hercules Brown's Home, Somerville, Maine (1944); Grease Plant Worker, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1946); Car Loaded with Furniture on Highway (1945); and Ferry Commuters, Staten Island, N.Y. (1946).

Parks renewed his search for photography jobs in the fashion world. Following his resignation from the Office of War Information, Parks moved to Harlem and became a freelance fashion photographer for Vogue under the editorship of Alexander Liberman. Despite racist attitudes of the day, Vogue editor, Liberman, hired him to shoot a collection of evening gowns. Parks photographed fashion for Vogue for the next few years and he developed the distinctive style of photographing his models in motion rather than poised. During this time, he published his first two books, Flash Photography (1947) and Camera Portraits: Techniques and Principles of Documentary Portraiture (1948).

A 1948 photographic essay on a young Harlem gang leader won Parks a staff job as a photographer and writer with America's leading photo-magazine, Life. His involement with Life would last until 1972. For over 20 years, Parks produced photographs on subjects including fashion, sports, Broadway, poverty, and racial segregation, as well as portraits of Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Muhammad Ali, and Barbra Streisand. He became "one of the most provocative and celebrated photojournalists in the United States."

His photographs for Life magazine, namely his 1956 photo essay, titled "The Restraints: Open and Hidden," illuminated the effects of racial segregation while simultaneously following the everyday lives and activities of three families in and near Mobile, Alabama: the Thronton’s, Causey’s, and Tanner’s. As curators at the High Museum of Art Atlanta note, while Parks’ photo essay served as decisive documentation of the Jim Crow South and all of its effects, he did not simply focus on demonstrations, boycotts, and brutality that were associated with that period instead, however, he "emphasized the prosaic details" of the lives of several families.

An exhibition of photographs from a 1950 project Parks completed for Life was exhibited in 2015 at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Parks returned to his hometown, Fort Scott, Kansas, where segregation persisted, and he documented conditions in the community and the contemporary lives of many of his eleven classmates from the segregated middle school they attended. The project included his commentary, but the work was never published by Life.

During his years with Life, Parks also wrote a few books on the subject of photography (particularly documentary photography), and in 1960 was named Photographer of the Year by the American Society of Magazine Photographers.

Film

In the 1950s, Parks worked as a consultant on various Hollywood productions. He later directed a series of documentaries on black ghetto life that were commissioned by National Educational Television. With his film adaptation of his autobiographical novel, The Learning Tree in 1969, Parks became Hollywood's first major black director. It was filmed in his home town of Fort Scott, Kansas. Parks also wrote the screenplay and composed the musical score for the film, with assistance from his friend, the composer Henry Brant.

Shaft, a 1971 detective film directed by Parks and starring Richard Roundtree as John Shaft, became a major hit that spawned a series of films that would be labeled as, blaxploitation. Parks' feel for settings was confirmed by Shaft, with its portrayal of the super-cool leather-clad, black private detective hired to find the kidnapped daughter of a Harlem racketeer.

Parks also directed the 1972 sequel, Shaft's Big Score, in which the protagonist finds himself caught in the middle of rival gangs of racketeers. Parks's other directorial credits include The Super Cops (1974) and Leadbelly (1976), a biopic of the blues musician Huddie Ledbetter.

In the 1980s, he made several films for television and composed the music and a libretto for Martin, a ballet tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr., which premiered in Washington, D.C. during 1989. It was screened on national television on King's birthday in 1990.

In 2000, as an homage, he had a cameo appearance in the Shaft sequel that starred Samuel L. Jackson in the title role as the namesake and nephew of the original John Shaft. In the cameo scene, Parks was sitting playing chess when Jackson greeted him as, "Mr. P.".

Musician and composer

His first job was as a piano player in a brothel when he was a teenager. Parks also performed as a jazz pianist. His song "No Love", composed in another brothel, was performed during a national radio broadcast by Larry Funk and his orchestra in the early 1930s.

Parks composed Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1953) at the encouragement of black American conductor, Dean Dixon, and his wife Vivian, a pianist, and with the help of the composer Henry Brant. He completed Tree Symphony in 1967. In 1989, he composed and directed Martin, a ballet dedicated to Martin Luther King, Jr., the civil rights leader who had been assassinated.

Writing

Starting in the late-1940s, Parks began writing—a second career that would produce 15 books and lead to his role as a prominent black filmmaker—starting with books on the art and craft of photography. Beginning in the 1960s, Parks branched out into literature, writing The Learning Tree (1963). He authored several books of poetry, which he illustrated with his own photographs, and he wrote three volumes of memoirs.

In 1981, Parks turned to fiction with Shannon, a novel about Irish immigrants fighting their way up the social ladder in turbulent early 20th-century New York. Parks' writing accomplishments include novels, poetry, autobiography, and non-fiction that includes photographic instructional manuals and film-making books. During this period, Parks also wrote the poem "The Funeral".

Painting

A gallery exhibition of his photography-related, abstract oil paintings was held in 1981.

Personal life

Parks was married and divorced three times. He married Sally Alvis in Minneapolis during 1933 and they divorced in 1961. He married Elizabeth Campbell in 1962 and they divorced in 1973. Parks first met Chinese-American editor Genevieve Young (stepdaughter of Chinese diplomat Wellington Koo) in 1962 when he began writing The Learning Tree. At that time, his publisher assigned her to be his editor. They became romantically involved at a time when they both were divorcing previous spouses, and married in 1973. They divorced in 1979. Candace Bushnell claims to have dated Parks in 1976, when she was 18 and he was 58. For many years, Parks was romantically involved with Gloria Vanderbilt, the railroad heiress and designer. Their relationship evolved into a deep friendship that endured throughout his lifetime.

Parks fathered four children: Gordon, Jr., David, Leslie, and Toni (Parks-Parsons). His oldest son Gordon Parks, Jr., whose talents resembled his father's, was killed in a plane crash in 1979 in Kenya, where he had gone to direct a film. Parks has five grandchildren: Alain, Gordon III, Sarah, Campbell, and Satchel. Malcolm X honored Parks when he asked him to be the godfather of his daughter, Qubilah Shabazz.

He died of cancer at the age of 93 while living in Manhattan, New York City, and is buried in his hometown of Fort Scott, Kansas.

Legacy

Parks is remembered for photography, film making, music composition, and writing. He also is known for his activism and campaigning for civil rights. He was the first African American to work at Life magazine and the first to write, direct, and score a Hollywood film. He was profiled in the 1967 documentary The Weapons of Gordon Parks, by American filmmaker Warren Forma.

Parks was a co-founder of Essence magazine. He was one of the early contributors to the style of movies that became known as the blaxploitation genre, in which negative stereotypes of black males being involved with drugs, violence and women, were exploited for commercially successful films featuring black actors.

Parks said that freedom was the theme of all of his work. He described it as, "Not allowing anyone to set boundaries, cutting loose the imagination, and then making the new horizons."

Parks' son, Gordon Parks, Jr. (1934–1979) also directed films, including Super Fly, Three the Hard Way, and Aaron Loves Angela. His career was cut short when he died in a plane crash in Africa.

In 1995 Parks announced that he would donate his papers and entire artistic collection to the Library of Congress and one year later, "The Gordon Parks Collection" was curated.

Legacy Preservation & Archives

Several parties are recipient or heirs to different parts of Gordon Parks' archival record—his collected papers, images, films, music and other works—and personal effects. The Gordon Parks Foundation in Pleasantville, New York holds the originals and rights to , the Gordon Parks Museum has collected a number of items from his childhood in Ft. Scott, Kansas and filming of The Learning Tree, Wichita State University is the official recipient of many of his written records Wichita, Kansas from the Parks estate, and the Library of Congress acquired a substantial Parks collection. The National Archives and the Smithsonian Institution (both in Washington, D.C.) also have some of Gordon Parks' works (particularly photos and films), and Kansas State University also has Parks holdings in its Special Collections. Parks is quoted by some of them as saying he wanted his works to be freely and readily available to the public. Some have posted some of his images online. Here are some details:

The Gordon Parks Foundation

The Gordon Parks Foundation in Pleasantville, New York (formerly in Chappaqua, New York), reports that it "permanently preserves the work of Gordon Parks, makes it available to the public through exhibitions, books, and electronic media," The organization also says it "supports artistic and educational activities that advance what Gordon described as 'the common search for a better life and a better world.'" That support includes scholarships for "artistic" students, and assistance to researchers. Their headquarters includes an exhibition space with rotating photography exhibits, open free to the public, with guided group tours available by arrangement. The foundation also admits "qualified researchers" to their archive, by appointment. The foundation collaborates with other organizations and institutions, nationally and internationally, to advance its aims.

The Gordon Parks Museum/Center

The Gordon Parks Museum/Center, in his hometown of Ft. Scott (in the southeast corner of Kansas), appears to be associated with Ft. Scott Community College. Its website reports that its holdings include dozens of Parks' photos (including his legendary American Gothic (photo), Tuskegee Airmen, [Brazilian orphan] Flavio, [boxer Muhammed] Ali Sweating, [actress] Ingrid Bergman on Stromboli and others, given to the Museum by Parks, personally, after his visit to their first Gordon Parks Celebration in 2004. The museum reports that more of his belongings were bequeathed to the Museum by Parks upon his death, in 2006, including "awards and medals, personal photos, paintings and drawings of Gordon, plaques, certificates, diplomas and honorary doctorates, selected books and articles, clothing, record player, tennis racquet, magazine articles, his collection of Life magazines and much more." The museum also received some of Parks' cameras (from daughter Toni and son David), writing desk (from Bill and Camille Cosby) and photos of Parks (from Patricia DuBose Duncan).

Library of Congress

The Library of Congress (LOC) reports that, in 1995, it "acquired Parks' personal collection, including papers, music, photographs, films, recordings, drawings and other products of his... career."

The LOC also was already home to a federal archive that included Parks' first major photojournalism projects -- the photographs he produced for the Farm Security Administration under the direction of Roy Stryker (1942-1943), and those he later produced for the Office of War Information, also under Stryker’s direction (1943-1945). They are in the LOC's the "FSA/OWI Black-and-White Negatives" collection.

In April 2000, the LOC awarded 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 of only 26 writers and artists so honored by the LOC. The LOC's Music Division also holds Mr. Parks's published and unpublished scores, and its Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division has several of his films and television productions.

National Film Registry

Parks' autobiographical motion picture, The Learning Tree, and his seminal African-American, anti-hero, action-drama Shaft, have both been selected to be permanently preserved as part of the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. The Learning Tree was one of the original group of 25 films first selected by the Library of Congress for the National Film Registry.

National Archives

The National Archives also hold the film, My Father, Gordon Parks (1969: archive 306.08063A) -- a film about Parks and his production of his autobiographical motion picture, The Learning Tree,—is preserved in the National Archives of the United States—along with a print (from the original) of Solomon Nortup's Odyssey, a film made by Parks for a Public Broadcasting System telecast about the ordeal of slave. The Archives also hold various photos from Parks' years in government service.

Smithsonian Institution

The Smithsonian Institution has an extensive list of holdings related to Gordon Parks, particularly photos.

Wichita State University

Parks and his legacy—and his historic papers, photos and other artifacts—have had a complex history with Wichita State University (WSU), in Wichita, the largest city in Parks' home state of Kansas.

In 1991, WSU awarded Parks its highest honor for achievement: the President's Medal. However, in the mid-1990s, after Parks entrusted WSU with a collection of 150 his famous photos, WSU—for various reasons (including confusion as to whether they were a gift or loan, and whether the University could aduequately protect and preserve them) -- returned them, stunning and deeply upsetting Parks. A further snub came from Wichita's city officials, who also declined the opportunity to acquire many of Parks' papers and photos.

By 2000, however, Wichita State University and Parks had healed their division. The university resumed honoring Parks and accumulating his papers, photos, film and other artifacts—under the guidance of WSU's vice president and general counsel, Ted D. Ayres (who would lead WSU's subsequent acquisitions of Parks memorabilia), and with the help of Wichita journalist Mark McCormick (later Executive Director of the Kansas African American Museum).

In 2008, under its president, Peter Kuhnhardt, the Gordon Parks Foundation selected Wichita State University as repository for 140 boxes of Gordon Parks’ photos, manuscripts, letters and other collected papers, with WSU's professed commitment to carefully research, index, preserve, present and publicize the collection.

In 2014, another 125 of Park's photos were acquired from the Gordon Parks Foundation by WSU and Ayres, with help from Wichita philanthropists Paula and Barry Downing, for display at the university's Ulrich Museum of Art.

Kansas State University

The Gordon Parks Collection, in the Arts, Culture, and Humanities section of the Special Collections of Kansas State University primarily documents the creation of his film The Learning Tree.

Exhibitions

• 1997: Half Past Autumn: The Art of Gordon Parks, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.. A career retrospective.
• 2015: Gordon Parks: Back to Fort Scott, Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
• 2015: Gordon Parks: Segregation Story, [High Museum of Art Atlanta].

Awards

• Parks received more than 20 honorary doctorates in his lifetime.
• 1941: Awarded a fellowship for photography from the Rosenwald Fund. The fellowship allowed him to work with the Farm Security Administration.
• 1961: Named "Magazine Photographer of the Year" (1960) by the American Society of Magazine Photographers.
• 1972: The NAACP awarded Parks the Spingarn Medal.
• 1984: Honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Thiel College, a private, liberal arts college in Greenville, Pennsylvania
• 1989: The United States Library of Congress deemed The Learning Tree "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" due to its being the first major studio feature film directed by an African American and the film was preserved in the United States National Film Registry.
• 1990: Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism, Missouri School of Journalism, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO
• 2000: The Congress Of Racial Equality Lifetime Achievement Award.
• 2000: Library of Congress deemed Shaft to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", selecting it for NFR preservation as well
• 2001: Kitty Carlisle Hart Award, Arts & Business Council, New York
• 2003: Royal Photographic Society's Special 150th Anniversary Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS) in recognition of a sustained, significant contribution to the art of photography.
• 1999: Gordon Parks Elementary School, a nonprofit, K-5 grade public charter school in Kansas City, Missouri, was established to educate the urban-core inhabitants.
• 2004: The Art Institute of Boston awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.
• 2008: An alternative learning center in Saint Paul, Minnesota renamed their school Gordon Parks High School after receiving a new building

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)
• To Smile in Autumn (1979) (autobiographical)
  • New edition with foreword by Alexs D. Pate. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009
• Voices in the Mirror, New York: Doubleday (1990) (autobiographical)
• The Sun Stalker (2003) (biography on J. M. W. Turner)
• A Hungry Heart (2005) (autobiographical)

Poetry and photography

• Gordon Parks: Elementary school
• Gordon Parks: A Poet and His Camera
• Gordon Parks: Whispers of Intimate Things
• Gordon Parks: In Love
• Gordon Parks: Moments Without Proper Names (1975)
• Arias of Silence
• Glimpses Toward Infinity
• A Star for Noon – An Homage to Women in Images Poetry and Music (2000)
• Eyes With Winged Thoughts (released November 1, 2005)
• Half Past Autumn: A Retrospective, memoir excerpts by Gordon Parks. Bulfinch Press/Little, Brown (1997) ISBN 0-8212-2298-8

Films

• Flavio (1964)
• Diary of a Harlem Family (1968)
• The World of Piri Thomas (1968)
• The Learning Tree (1969)
• Shaft (1971)
• Shaft's Big Score (1972), director and composer
• The Super Cops (1974)
• Thomasine & Bushrod (1974)
• Leadbelly (1976)
• Solomon Northup's Odyssey (1984)
• Moments Without Proper Names (1987)
• Martin (1989), PBS presentation of the stage performance of the ballet written on Martin Luther King, Jr.

Music

• Moments Without Proper Names (1987)
• Martin (1989) (ballet about Martin Luther King)
• Shaft's Big Score (1972)

Publications about Parks

• Berry, S. L. Gordon Parks. New York: Chelsea House 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, and Gordon Parks. Gordon Parks: No Excuses. Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company, 2006. ISBN 1-58980-411-2
• Stange, Maren. Bare Witness: photographs by Gordon Parks. Milan: Skira, 2006. ISBN 88-7624-802-1
• Turk, Midge, and Herbert Danska. Gordon Parks. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1971. ISBN 0-690-33793-0

Documentaries on or including Parks

• Soul in Cinema: Filming Shaft on Location (1971)
• Passion and Memory (1986)
• Malcolm X: Make it Plain (1994)
• All Power to the People (1996)
• Half Past Autumn: The Life and Works of Gordon Parks (2000)
• A Great Day in Hip-Hop (2000)
• Baadasssss Cinema (2002)
• Soul Man: Isaac Hayes (2003)
• Unstoppable: Conversation with Melvin Van Peebles, Gordon Parks, and Ossie Davis (2005)

See also

• Photographers of the American Civil Rights Movement

Other sources

Primary source materials

• Gordon Parks Collection. Special Collections, Kansas State University Library.
• Collected Photography, other artwork, and texts. Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art.
• Gordon Parks Papers Exhibit or Finding Aid. Special Collections and University Archives. Wichita State University Libraries.
• Digital Archive. Gordon Parks Foundation. Currently, the negatives are held at the Special Collections at Purchase College, New York.
• Gordon Parks FSA OWI Photos. Held by the Library of Congress.
• Gordon Parks Oral History from the National Visionary Leadership Project

Additional article length works

• Director Guild of America profile

External links

• Gordon Parks at the Internet Movie Database
• The Gordon Parks Foundation
• Gordon Parks Collection. Photograph and poetry exhibit in Gordon Parks' hometown
• Some of his photography
• Luminous-Lint page
• Ordway Theater presents Gordon Parks in the VocalEssence Witness series
• C-SPAN interview with Parks, discussing the exhibit "Half Past Autumn: The Art of Gordon Parks", November 25, 1997
• PBS Newshour, January 6, 1998
• Further biographical information can be found at the Thomson/Gale
• Photo District News, Legends Online site for Gordon Parks
• Gordon Parks' oral history video excerpts at The National Visionary Leadership Project
• Gordon Parks Gallery at Metropolitan State University, Saint Paul, Minnesota gallery devoted to preserving the legacy of Gordon Parks
• Art Directors Club biography, portrait and images of work
• Works by Gordon Parks at Open Library
• The chapter entitled "Gordon Parks: A Versatile Titan Who Made His Name First As a Photojournalist" is included in this representative world photo-history The Photographic Spirit: Inspiring Photo Lives and Images, authored by David Joseph Marcou and published in 2013 online (La Crosse History Unbound website) and also in paperback.