Gordon Parks on the Power of Photography
Belle Hutton, AnOther Magazine
July 2020
Gordon Parks was a prolific photographer, filmmaker, writer, poet, painter and composer. During his extensive career, he was a pioneer: in the 1950s he became the first black photographer on staff at Life magazine, where he would work for over 20 years; in 1969 with the release of The Learning Tree, Parks became the first black director to helm a Hollywood studio film (he also produced it, wrote the screenplay – an adaptation of his semi-autobiographical novel of the same name – and composed the film’s score); and his 1971 film Shaft is credited as the first blaxploitation movie. Over the course of his life, Parks wrote four autobiographies, among novels and poetry collections, the last of which was published in 2005, the year before he died at the age of 93. […]