§ LEGENDS · 2 MIN READ
He Bought a Camera at a Pawn Shop
Gordon Parks called it his choice of weapons. He used it to become the first Black photographer at Life, then the first Black man to direct a major Hollywood studio film, and he never had a lesson.
By Culture
THE SHORT VERSION
Gordon Parks bought his first camera at a pawn shop and taught himself photography, becoming the first Black staff photographer at Life magazine. He later became the first Black man to write and direct a major Hollywood studio film with The Learning Tree, and directed Shaft, while also working as a composer and author.
Gordon Parks did not go to photography school. He saw photographs of migrant workers in a magazine, walked into a pawn shop, bought a camera for a few dollars, and taught himself.
He called the camera his choice of weapons, and he meant it precisely: a tool selected deliberately for a fight he had decided to have.
He photographed for the Farm Security Administration, where he made the portrait known as American Gothic, of a cleaning woman named Ella Watson standing with a broom and a mop before an American flag. It is one of the most quoted photographs in American history and it was made by a man who had been taking pictures for a very short time.
He became the first Black staff photographer at Life magazine, at a moment when Life was the way most Americans saw the country. From that position he photographed poverty, segregation, Harlem gang life, the civil rights movement, Muhammad Ali, and Paris fashion, and he did all of it with the same eye.
That range is the thing to notice. He refused to be the photographer of one subject, which was the role available to him.
In 1969 he wrote and directed The Learning Tree, adapted from his own novel, becoming the first Black man to write and direct a major Hollywood studio feature.
Then in 1971 he directed Shaft, which was a commercial hit large enough to matter to a studio's balance sheet, and that commercial fact opened doors that argument had not.
He also composed music, including a ballet, and wrote memoirs, novels and poetry. He was a man who kept deciding he could do the next thing without permission.
“He did not wait to be trained. He bought the tool and made the argument with it.”
The barrier to making an image has collapsed to nothing. Everybody has the camera in their pocket, which means the pawn shop step is already done for all of us.
What has not changed is the part that was actually hard: deciding what you are photographing and why, going where other people are not going, and staying long enough that the subject stops performing.
Quiana Lewis is doing that here with the ordinary interiors of this city, Max Sansing is doing it at building scale, and the wall of donated family portraits is the same instinct exercised by people who never called themselves photographers.
If you are the one with the eye: publish it. Start the channel, keep the originals, and photograph the things nobody has decided are worth photographing yet. That is the entire method.
- Was Gordon Parks self-taught?
- Yes. He bought his first camera at a pawn shop after seeing photographs of migrant workers in a magazine, and taught himself photography with no formal training.
- What was Gordon Parks known for?
- Becoming the first Black staff photographer at Life magazine, making the photograph known as American Gothic of the cleaning woman Ella Watson, and later becoming the first Black man to write and direct a major Hollywood studio film with The Learning Tree. He also directed Shaft.
- What did Gordon Parks mean by choice of weapons?
- It was his description of the camera: a tool chosen deliberately for a fight he had decided to have, rather than an artistic pursuit separate from the conditions he was documenting.
