Page 5 • The InTowner • January 2019
NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
4th & Constitution; (202) 737-4215
By Joseph R. Phelan*
Gordon Parks: The New Tide,
Early Work 1940–1950
(closing January 18, 2019)
Art & Culture
T
he career of Gordon Parks (1912–
2006), one of the great American photographers and filmmakers, is a remarkable
story of talent and dedication overcoming racial discrimination and poverty. He
famously viewed his camera as his weapon
of choice in the struggle for dignity and to
combat social injustice. Yet as the exhibition at the National Gallery of Art makes
clear, fashion and glamour were also Park’s
weapons and essential to his ascent to the
pinnacles of his profession.
As he moved geographically from Saint
Paul to Chicago to Washington, DC, to
New York, he also moved from the world
of poverty and segregation to that of power
and privilege. We see Parks’ start as a selftaught photographer working for Twin City
African-American newspapers and making
glamour shots for a Saint Paul lady’s fashion
shop.
One of the customers of that shop, the
elegant Marva Trotter Louis, wife of professional boxer Joe Louis, recommended Parks
Parks, Self-Portrait, 1941.
for a job in Chicago where he
met important artists, writers,
and scholars such as Langston
Hughes, Alain Locke, and
Richard Wright. These men
became friends and subjects. He
also photographed First Lady
Eleanor Roosevelt and Marian
Anderson when they made
appearances in Chicago.
Painter Charles White (the
subject of a recent exhibition at
the Museum of Modern Art in
New York) encouraged Parks to
go into black neighborhoods to
document their poverty. A prestigious photography fellowship
gave Parks an opportunity to
work in Washington, DC for the
Farm Service Administration
(FSA). Living in DC was his
first experience in an officially
segregated city; the shock and
anger at what he experienced
might have derailed his career.
Instead his mentor, Roy Stryker
who was also his boss at the
Parks, Washington, D.C. Government charwoman,
July 1942.
Parks, Washington, D.C. Mrs. Ella Watson, a government charwoman, with three grandchildren and her
adopted daughter, July 1942.
FSA, was shrewd enough to
teach Parks how to channel
his anger into his art.
On the advice of Stryker,
Parks began thinking in terms
of shooting a photographic
sequence around a theme.
In July 1942, Parks met and
began to photograph Ella
Watson, a cleaning woman
employed by the Department
of Agriculture where the
Farm Security Administration
was housed. Parks got to
know Watson and her family;
her work, family, neighborhood, and church became
the subject of Park’s photo
story as it illustrated many
concerns about race and discrimination that he wished to
examine
America had entered World
War II just six months before
and national magazines were
encouraged to devote their
July covers to patriotic art and
photography. Three-hundred
Parks, Marva Trotter Louis, Chicago, Illinois, 1941.
are fascinating photos of street gangs as well
as glamorous models, society women, and
actresses.
Of this last category, my favorite is one
of the young Ingrid Bergman on the set of
Roberto Rossellini’s film Stromboli. The photograph shows a pensive Bergman dressed
in white with the three peasant
women looking like a Greek
chorus in the background. The
image seems to foreshadow the
fate of the actress when her affair
with the director and subsequent
pregnancy became known and
caused a moralistic furor back in
the United States which almost
ended her Hollywood career.
The exhibition is curated by
Philip Brookman, consulting
curator in the Gallery’s department of photographs. A fully
illustrated catalog edited by Mr.
Brookman, with extensive new
research and previously unpublished images, accompanies the
exhibition.
*Joseph R. Phelan is a Washington
based author and teacher. He is the
founding editor of Artcyclopedia.
com, the fine art search engine.
He has taught at the Catholic
University of America and the
University of Maryland University
Parks, Langston Hughes, Chicago, December 1941.
magazines printed the American flag on
their front cover. Parks posed Mrs. Watson
holding a broom and a mop, with an
American flag in the background titled
“Washington, D.C. Government charwoman.” The result is one of the most famous
photographs of the 20th century.
The pose is reminiscent of
Grant Wood’s American Gothic,
a painting that Parks would have
known from the Art Institute of
Chicago. Scholars have long
assumed that this was Parks’
inspiration though more recently
it has been suggested that Jacob
Lawrence’s panel The female
workers were the last to arrive north
from his Great Migration series
may have been the real inspiration. Parks could have seen that
work at the Phillips Collection.
The exhibition concludes with
Parks’ efforts to make it in the
highly competitive world of photojournalism. After working for
Ebony, Glamor and other publications, he became the first
African-American photographer
of Life magazine, the preeminent
magazine of the period. There
College.
Copyright © 2018 InTowner Publishing Corp. &
Joseph R. Phelan. All rights reserved. Reproduction
in whole or in part without permission is prohibited,
except as provided by 17 U.S.C. §107 (“fair use”).
Parks, Ingrid Bergman on location for the film Stromboli, in
1949. [courtesy, The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images.]