Gordon Parks Discussion
Today we watched a video clip from Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People, 2015. The documentary explores the role of photography in revealing the experiences and perspectives of African Americans that are often left out of the traditional historical canon. Our discussion focused on Gordon Parks, the first African American photographer to work for LIFE magazine and an important figure in shaping identity politics surrounding African Americans in the 1940’s-70’s. Parks is the subject of an upcoming exhibition at the AIC called Invisible Man: Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison in Harlem, which you can read more about here.
Our exploration of Parks’ photojournalism lead to a larger discussion about the importance of self-authorship and being able to tell your own story. Through photography, Parks challenged mainstream understanding of people of color as presented in the media and publicized uplifting and empowering images of African Americans for the first time in history. He used his skills and craft to give voice to his community and re-shape the one- sided narratives used to describe people of color.
Fatimah emphasized that “Parks’ used photography to break some of the silences- especially around segregation and poverty- and it was cool because no one else was doing it at that time. Parks’ artistic decisions when taking photographs helped to change our perspective of the world and continue to be of importance in our understanding of history.”
The following are some of the reactions the teens had to Parks’ work:
Justyn- “I’m a photographer myself and i didn’t even know cameras were this advanced. His photographs tell a story and it makes me want to know more about him and what he was thinking.”
Malaika- “Parks’ photographs are impressive and expansive and their significance extend beyond just the U.S. They’re significant on an international scale.”
Celeste- “I think he was really changing the singular perspective back then that was presented through mostly white photographers. He’s presenting another story.
Bella- “He was capturing super historical moments while at the same time becoming a significant part of history, himself. Which is super dope.”
Ameerah- “He was capturing his people just as they normally are in the everyday. Some of his photos even felt familiar.”
Fatimah then asked us to think about the ways art and photography can be used as important political tools. As Parks’ photojournalism reveals, the choices and decisions that we make when creating and presenting our artwork are extremely significant. How we frame our work can influence how our art is read and understood by others.
To explore the power of artistic choice, we looked at the relationship between photo and text, (whether that be a newspaper clipping and accompanying photo or an Instagram picture and hashtag). In small groups, we created captions for a random assortment of non contextualized images to tell a larger narrative.
Sharing our projects revealed the extent to which artistic choices and accompanying text can influence the way we internalize images. Though each group was given the same set of pictures to arrange and describe, the stories we told about the images were drastically different. Circling back to Parks, we related the power of the artist to manipulate images to the power of the media to construct our understanding of the world.
The take-away: While we created different stories for the same set of images, we shared a common belief in the importance of being a critical and well-informed viewer.