Self-Portrait by Gordon Parks

Born and raised in segregated Fort Scott, Kansas, Gordon Parks was eleven years old when three white boys tossed him into the Marmaton River, knowing that he couldn’t swim.  Parks ducked underwater until the boys left so that they would not see him make it to land.  When Parks told his teachers that he wanted to go to college, he was told that it would be a waste of money.  After his mother died, a 15 year-old Parks found himself living on the streets and struggling to survive.  He worked as a singer, a piano player, a busboy, and even in a few brothels.  It was while working as a waiter in a railroad dining car that he first saw the photographs in magazines and realized that he wanted to be a photographer.

Parks was 25 when he bought his first camera and soon, he was both documenting everyday African-American life and working as a fashion photographer.  At a time when segregation was still the law of the land, Parks became one of the most prominent and acclaimed photojournalists in America.  Parks would eventually branch out into film directing, becoming the first African-American to direct a major studio film when, in 1969, he directed The Learning Tree for Warner Bros.

Below is a small sampling of Gordon Parks’s work.