Dr. Jean Timberlake

American Composition

Jason T. Powell

28 April 2001

Review of Gordon Parks’ “Half-Past Autumn”

     I hadn’t heard much about Gordon Parks and didn’t realize that this was the same man that directed the movie “Shaft”.  After reading the short bio before entering the gallery I still wasn’t all that impressed with the man.  I was already here though and the museum had my five bucks so I figured I might as well walk through.  After seeing the exhibit my tune had changed.  I was ready to run to the store, purchase a few rolls of film, a camera, and get to work.  Maybe even take a stab at a poem or two.  I left feeling really inspired.  I didn’t do any of that though.  Not that I didn't want to but because only people like Parks can do what people like Parks do. 

     The work of Gordon Parks is multi-faceted and downright moving.  The man has done almost too many things to list.  He’s an artistic jack-of-all-trades.  He’s a photojournalist, musical composer, film director, poet, writer, and artist.  The work he is most known for are the photos he took for “Life Magazine”, “Vogue”, “Glamour”, and the Federal Farm Security Administration.  While working as a waiter on a rail car he looked through a discarded magazine.  After looking through it he said he knew then he had to take pictures.  “I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs.  I knew then that I had to have a camera”, Parks says. Most of his work seems almost permeated with the passion that led him to buy his first camera.  The thing that I like most about Parks’ photos is that they tell a story.  His job as a documentary photographer was to make the picture tell a thousand words.  His pictures did exactly just that.  You could look at the picture, never read the article or caption, and know exactly what was going on.  Even with all that you couldn’t resist the urge to read the story and find out more. Parks pictures didn’t just cover one side of the story either.  I really enjoyed a photo he had taken while he was in Europe.  One of his pieces is composed of two pictures.  One picture has a poor girl looking inside a café window from the outside.  The other shot in the set was from a well-to-do lady looking out the window at the girl.  The expressions alone tell a story.  His photos knew no boundaries.  He shot everything from the world’s most sophisticated runway models to the absolute poverty in the Brazilian slums.  Sometimes doing both in the same day or week.  When you look at his photos even though they were in a different time and place they are totally relevant to the world today.  I saw myself in a lot of his pictures.  You get the feeling that if you had been around when the picture was taken that could have easily been you or me. 

        Sometimes when you look at a photo it looks as if the photo was staged or the photographer had to wait hours to get that shot.  With Parks’ pictures you get the feeling if you had been there any time of the day, but especially that time of the day, and wandered by you’d see something like what was in his pictures.  It makes me want to know the people, visit the place, heck even go out and buy a camera.  It’s very hard to look at Parks’ pictures and not be moved by something in them.  He has one photo named “The Fight” where he catches a fight going down between some of the members of a gang in Harlem.  Not too many photographers would be bold enough to hang around for such a thing.  Among the photographers bold enough to hang around few could pull it off like Parks.  This picture shows Parks' ability to be unconventional while capturing the common without disturbing either of the two.  He has a fly on the wall perspective that candidly catches people doing what they do as if he wasn’t even there.  He has a photo of an older woman taken at eye level from the foot of her bed.  You get a glimpse of what it’s really like for this woman at the end of her day.  You can just look at the woman lying there and tell that her life is hard. Her hands and feet are calloused and rough.  It doesn’t look like she’s bothered to get cleaned before bed or even change the clothes she had on.  There is no ventilation and lighting in the room is just awful.  With all of that though you can tell the woman is happy to not only have but to be in her bed.  Photos like this in all areas with people from all walks of life make up Parks’ hallmark shots.

    I didn’t particularly care for Parks’ color photos except for the one oriental one with the fans.  The exhibit also had some music he’d composed as well as some poems.  I didn’t care too much for those either.  I could appreciate it for the art that it was but it seemed like he’d stopped doing what he did best which was tell the story and was trying to be an artist.  This man doesn’t need to try to be an artist.  He already is one. The mood and tone didn't seem to come as natural as it did in his earlier work.  The naturalness and candidness that is seen in the work of his earlier days just seemed liked it was being a bit forced.

     All in all I'd have to give "Half Past Autumn" an excellent review.  His art ranges from simple, to complex, and everything in between.  With the range of variety and style Parks covers I can almost guarantee on you finding something there that moves them.