Filmmaker Gordon Parks, who was the first black American photojournalist for Life magazine, the first leading black filmmaker with movies such as “The Learning Tree” and “Shaft,” died Tuesday at his home in New York today at the beautiful age of 93.
“Gordon was the ultimate cool,” said Richard Roundtree, who starred in 1971's “Shaft,” which spawned a series of black-oriented films. “There's no one cooler than Gordon Parks.”
He went from being a poor high-school dropout to a black pioneer, leaving a legacy of stark and unblinking photographs, genre-forging movies, novels, poetry, music and even a ballet.
“I think most people can do a whole awful lot more if they just try,” Parks said in 2000. “They just don't have the confidence that they can write a novel or they can write poetry or they can take pictures or paint or whatever, and so they don't do it, and they leave the planet dissatisfied with themselves.”
Parks covered everything from fashion to sports during his 20 years at Life from 1948 to 1968, but was perhaps best known for his gritty photo essays on the grinding effects of poverty in the United States and abroad and on the spirit of the civil rights movement. In 1961, his photographs in Life of a poor, ailing Brazilian boy named Flavio da Silva brought donations that saved the boy and purchased a new home for him and his family.
“The Learning Tree” was Parks' first film, in 1969, based on his 1963 autobiographical novel of the same name, in which the young hero grapples with fear and racism as well as first love and schoolboy triumphs. Parks also directed and wrote the score. (In 1989, it was among the first 25 American movies to be placed on the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. The registry is intended to highlight films of particular cultural, historical or aesthetic importance.)
Parks directed “Shaft” and a sequel, “Shaft's Big Score,” in 1972, and that same year his son Gordon Jr. directed “Superfly.”
In addition to novels, poetry and his autobiographical writings, Parks' writing credits include a 1971 book of essays called “Born Black”; “A Hungry Heart: A Memoir”; and “Eyes With Winged Thoughts,” featuring his poetry and photographs.
Parks was born Nov. 30, 1912, in Fort Scott, Kan., the youngest of 15 children. In his 1990 autobiography, “Voices in the Mirror,” he remembered it as a world of racism and poverty, but also a world where his parents gave their children love, discipline and religious faith.
“Nothing came easy,” Parks wrote. “I was just born with a need to explore every tool shop of my mind, and with long searching and hard work. I became devoted to my restlessness.”
We should all do half of what this wonderfull man has done with our lives. I had the honor of meeting him in 2005 for the Chicago opening of “Badddasss,” the biopic on the making of “Sweet Badddass' Song,” and he was kind, and open, and listened as well as spoke. I'm definately dropping a little bit on the ground for him tonight, because his influence on Black art in the 60s and 70s could never be surpassed.
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