[Earlier this
year, I had the chance to visit an amazing photography exhibition at Boston’s
Musuem of Fine Arts: Gordon Parks: Back to Fort
Scott. In this series, I’ll use that exhibition as a starting point for
highlighting some of the many ways Parks’s career and life illuminate late 20th
century American history and culture. Add your thoughts, whether you’ve seen
the exhibition or not, in comments!]
On three reasons
why the Parks exhibition (which runs through September!)
is a must-see.
1)
These photos have been unseen for more than 60
years: I can’t sum up the amazing story of Parks’s photojournalism assignment
for Life magazine, a series that the
magazine subsequently never aired (for unclear reasons—perhaps
because historical events got in the way, perhaps because of racism, perhaps
just because of the exigencies of publishing), better than this
New York Times story on the
exhibition. So I’ll just add that the chance to see amazing unreleased photos
from one of our most talented and significant photographers, more than six
decades after they were taken, is an opportunity no AmericanStudier should pass
up.
2)
The photos reflect our history in subtle but
vital ways: When Parks returned in 1950 to his hometown of Fort Scott, Kansas,
to try to catch up with and photograph a group of his high school classmates,
the town remained as segregated as it had been in his 1910s and 20s childhood. Other
than one picture of a young African American couple standing outside the town’s
segregated movie theater (the second picture in the preview slideshow at the exhibition’s website),
Parks’s photos don’t overtly portray that Jim Crow world. But on the other
hand, of course they do—these individuals and families, lives and communities,
were all part of that world, affected by and engaging with it on so many
levels, and the photos provide a glimpse into that world far beyond the perhaps
more familiar headlines and images.
3)
The photos capture humanity: As a photographer
primarily interested in human subjects, Parks (on whose life and career more in
tomorrow’s post) was obviously very talented at portraits—not only at the
literal art of taking people’s pictures, but at the more complex and compelling
skill of capturing their identities and worlds through such portraits. And in
the Fort Scott series, that skill served him very well for two distinct but
related reasons. For one thing, segregation and racism depend on seeing people
as types and stereotypes, not three-dimensional human beings; even in
two-dimensional photos, Parks consistently pierced that prejudicial
perspective. And for another thing, our 21st century narratives of
histories like Jim Crow still too often portray people as simply small dots
within the big picture; but the people in Parks’s photos are life-size, and
give us amazingly powerful glimpses into those lives as a result.
If you’re in the
Boston area, get to the exhibition ASAP! If you’re not, feel free to come visit
me and we’ll go together! Next Parks connection tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think?
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