Gordon Parks Research Articles

“The name is Blacula!”: Identity and Palimpsest in William Marshall’s Vampire Diptych

Abstract: In the early 1970s, a new cinematic genre, the Blaxploitation film, emerged from a creative scene which saw Black actors, writers, and directors enabled to produce their own original works for the first time. Often accused of trafficking in unsavory racial tropes, Blaxploitation films nevertheless displayed aspects of America’s racial problems and subtly complicated Black stereotypes while capitalizing on them to entertain both Black and White audiences. Films such as Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (dir. Melvin Van Peebles, 1971) and Shaft (dir. Gordon Parks, 1971) may be most recalled as having catapulted this genre to fame, but an often-overlooked subgenre—the Blaxploitation horror film—also offered its unique brand of cultural insight. William Crain’s seminal Blaxploitation horror film, Blacula (1972), and its fast-tracked sequel, Scream Blacula Scream (dir. Bob Kelljan, 1973), demonstrate the power of the Blaxploitation framework to transcend its harmful stereotypes and to expose oppressive cultural practices. Our analysis of this pair of Blaxploitation horror films focuses upon two aspects of their position as representatives of their subgenre: first, their influence upon the wider cinematic culture, particularly the culture of horror cinema; second, the ability of Blacula and its sequel to play with and against their racial stereotypes.

Look: How a Highly Influential Magazine Helped Define Mid-Twentieth Century America

Look: How a Highly Influential Magazine Helped Define Mid-Twentieth Century America

TEXTURES: The History and Art of Black Hair

TEXTURES: The History and Art of Black Hair

Walking with Ella Watson: Photography, Interiority, and the Spiritual Church Movement in the Work of Gordon Parks

Walking with Ella Watson: Photography, Interiority, and the Spiritual Church Movement in the Work of Gordon Parks

Listening for the Pictures

This essay is inspired by the words of Pulitzer Prize–winning Chicago Sun Times photographer John White, who once told me to “listen for the pictures.” His message rang clear but never more so than when in 1990 we were covering the release of Nelson Mandela in Cape Town, South Africa. The Cape Town scene was alive and filled with so much vibrance. I was keenly aware that I must not just look, but I must listen, and use all my God-given senses to take it in. I can only describe the moment I started listening to the layer of sound, which was my own clicking camera superimposed on the chorus of sounds that surrounded me as both meta and sonorific. There was a certain rhythm to the sensation I felt in being one with my camera. It transported me to a wonderful place in time where visuals and cadences danced together. I realized there was alchemy in this and in all the other moments and locations I had spent behind a camera developing and exercising that “inner ear” my ancestors, some gone, like Gordon Parks, but others here, like White, taught me to revere. This essay is a snapshot of some of those moments—a proof sheet, if you will—from a life that began, as did the civil rights era, with instances of terror and triumph. This essay chronicles my journey as a young photographer and the many influences that shaped my creative process and eventually my worldview. This essay is an invitation to travel with me through time and see life as my camera and I witnessed it, and to hear and sense the world as I do.

Review: Gordon Parks: The Flávio Story, edited by Paul Roth and Amanda Maddox

Review: <i>Gordon Parks: The Flávio Story</i>, edited by Paul Roth and Amanda Maddox

Ellison visits greenwood, 1921

POETRY ellison visits greenwood, 1921 by Quraysh Ali Lansana oklahoma sun an oppressive neighbor in august 1920. churchgoers settle after-dinner stomachs. deep deuce a murmuring disquiet: raid at the chandler’s. moonshine & melanin the news on the street. daddy chandler & one officer dead & young claude jailed with alleged murder on his shirt. the christian sabbath a buzzing lynching bee three white men freed claude from his cage one thousand armed black men on 2nd street mayor & police allow one of three cars of now unarmed black men to find claude to return the next sweltering midday without him, his body rotting meat ten miles from okc beaten & shot. miss ida had had enough. her lewis gone years now, she frets when ralph delivers the dispatch & herbert still too young to spell KKK. maybe indiana. maybe gary, where brother works steel. a stop in greenwood to visit family on way north. hundreds of shops businesses, elegant houses, hospitals. vibrant black life in the face of jim crow, so unlike the deuce. closer to the harlem ralph would know. gary was not negro paradise. ida jobless, the boys eating garbage from trash cans. okc was hateful but at least familiar. dry heat stings black skin irritable but somehow bearable with family. highway leads them back to tulsa before 2nd street. greenwood was gone. black wall street now invisible. The author of twenty books of poetry, nonfiction, and children’s literature, Quraysh Ali Lansana is currently a Tulsa Artist Fellow as well as writer in residence, adjunct professor, and acting director of the Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation at Oklahoma State University– Tulsa. He is executive producer of KOSU radio’s Focus: Black Oklahoma, and his forthcoming titles include Those Who Stayed: Life in 1921 Tulsa after the Massacre. He is a member of TriCity Collective. GORDON PARKS, UNTITLED, HARLEM, NEW YORK, 1952, COURTESY OF AND © THE GORDON PARKS FOUNDATION WORLDLIT.ORG 51 ...

Ellison visits greenwood, 1921

POETRY ellison visits greenwood, 1921 by Quraysh Ali Lansana oklahoma sun an oppressive neighbor in august 1920. churchgoers settle after-dinner stomachs. deep deuce a murmuring disquiet: raid at the chandler’s. moonshine & melanin the news on the street. daddy chandler & one officer dead & young claude jailed with alleged murder on his shirt. the christian sabbath a buzzing lynching bee three white men freed claude from his cage one thousand armed black men on 2nd street mayor & police allow one of three cars of now unarmed black men to find claude to return the next sweltering midday without him, his body rotting meat ten miles from okc beaten & shot. miss ida had had enough. her lewis gone years now, she frets when ralph delivers the dispatch & herbert still too young to spell KKK. maybe indiana. maybe gary, where brother works steel. a stop in greenwood to visit family on way north. hundreds of shops businesses, elegant houses, hospitals. vibrant black life in the face of jim crow, so unlike the deuce. closer to the harlem ralph would know. gary was not negro paradise. ida jobless, the boys eating garbage from trash cans. okc was hateful but at least familiar. dry heat stings black skin irritable but somehow bearable with family. highway leads them back to tulsa before 2nd street. greenwood was gone. black wall street now invisible. The author of twenty books of poetry, nonfiction, and children’s literature, Quraysh Ali Lansana is currently a Tulsa Artist Fellow as well as writer in residence, adjunct professor, and acting director of the Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation at Oklahoma State University– Tulsa. He is executive producer of KOSU radio’s Focus: Black Oklahoma, and his forthcoming titles include Those Who Stayed: Life in 1921 Tulsa after the Massacre. He is a member of TriCity Collective. GORDON PARKS, UNTITLED, HARLEM, NEW YORK, 1952, COURTESY OF AND © THE GORDON PARKS FOUNDATION WORLDLIT.ORG 51 ...

Making Space

In this interview, artist and scholar Deborah Willis describes the work of excavating and organizing the history of Black photography. Willis’s groundbreaking scholarship helped to formally establish an archive of Black visual practice before libraries and cultural institutions began to purposely catalogue such materials. Across projects, she has engaged questions of beauty, citizenship, Black culture, and family history from the nineteenth century to the present by closely examining the camera practices of legendary photographers and the cultural contexts surrounding iconic images. In this interview, Willis describes her research as a student relying on periodical records as well as on the support of Black artists such as Roy DeCarava, Carrie Mae Weems, Gordon Parks, and James VanDerZee. This conversation with the author intertwines Willis’s personal history and the history of creating a visual archive to offer a look back and a look forward at the practice of Black photography.

Thirdspace Investigations: Geography, Dehumanization, and Seeking Spatial Justice in Kinesiology

ABSTRACTThe 39th Annual Dudley A. Sargent Lecturer challenges the kinesiology professions to be intentional in addressing issues related to spatiality. Beginning with an outline of how such a focus has viability for the profession, the author overviews: (a) spatial justice and mobility through the lens of Gordon Parks; (b) surfing, localism and cityhood efforts; (c) notions of space and dehumanization as defined by Herbert Kelman; and (d) the need for a renewal of kinesthetic consciousness in the face of unrestricted technocracy in physical education. The second part of the lecture presents an interpretation of Edward Soja’s theory of Thirdspace in the midst of a social climate influenced by protectionism, isolationism, xenophobia, and anti-elite discourse. In relaying Olivia Butler’s caution on hierarchical thinking, the author ends by imploring academic institutions to invest in sustainable reconciliation efforts for the survival of humanity.

Fired Up! Ready to Go!: Finding Beauty, Demanding Equity: An African American Life in Art. The Collections of Peggy Cooper Cafritz by Peggy Cooper Cafritz

Reviewed by: Fired Up! Ready to Go!: Finding Beauty, Demanding Equity: An African American Life in Art. The Collections of Peggy Cooper Cafritz by Peggy Cooper Cafritz Michelle Joan Wilkinson Peggy Cooper Cafritz. Fired Up! Ready to Go!: Finding Beauty, Demanding Equity: An African American Life in Art. The Collections of Peggy Cooper Cafritz. New York: Rizzoli Electa, 2018. 288 pp. $75.00. This book has a long title, but it is necessary. Fired Up! Ready to Go! is more than a survey of the "the collections of Peggy Cooper Cafritz," the long-time supporter of contemporary African American and African diaspora artists, whose [End Page 114] initial collection was destroyed in a fire in 2009. The book is also a chronicle of institution-building and arts advocacy. And, most memorably, it is a biography told through Cooper Cafritz's words, her art, and the recollections of her art world friends. For beginners, a standard question might be, "Who is Peggy Copper Cafritz?" "She is a terrestrial constellation connecting stars across galaxies in the fine art universe" (203), writes artist Hank Willis Thomas. Willis Thomas gives us this imaginative response after first describing Cooper Cafritz as both a "legend" and a "force of nature." With "constellation," Willis Thomas aimed for something more visual and unbound that could convey the potency of Cooper Cafritz's reach. While few black art cognoscenti would need to ask who Cooper Cafritz is, seldom few may know the legend beyond her defining roles as the founder of the Duke Ellington School for the Arts in Washington, D.C.; as a co-chair of the Cultural Equity Committee of the Smithsonian; and as an avid collector of African American, African, and Caribbean artists. That is why this book is so necessary. Every page is a gift. Every sentence a revelation. The images provide their own wondrous provocation. But it is Cooper Cafritz's pointed storytelling that solidifies this volume's place in African American art history and black biography/memoir. Readers are rewarded from the beginning with "Soul Memories," Cooper Cafritz's first-person essay—a substantive, straight-ahead dive into how she developed into the passionate advocate and institution builder renowned in the national arts community. As Cooper Cafritz details, her upbringing in segregated Mobile, Alabama was framed by "everything separate, everyone separated, every place we could not go, every event we could not attend. Everything a fight" (23). The college-educated Cooper family lived surrounded by books and art. A Georges Braque print hung in their dining room, and whenever bored, Cooper Cafritz looked to it to whet her imagination. There was a children's library in their family room, but she preferred venturing into her father's private library, which had a section of books by and about black people, alongside classics of the Western canon. Her political education was far-ranging. On one occasion, the Coopers welcomed Martin Luther King, Jr. to their home where he would inscribe his latest book, Strive Toward Freedom, for the impressionable sixth grader—a memorable event for a girl who was already developing a fire in her belly against injustice. On another occasion, she met Gordon Parks who had been taking photos of poverty in Mobile. The conditions incensed her. Cooper Cafritz explains that such experiences during childhood "probably coalesced the anger and the creativity, because my creativity has never been separated from my political anger" (253), she says. In the intimacies of Cooper Cafritz's story—often told in her own words or those of individuals who were very close to her—we begin to understand "a life," as the lengthy title indicates. We go with her to boarding school, university, and law school. We learn about brothers and sisters, and fellow students. There is not much detail about her marriage to and divorce from Conrad Cafritz, but we learn about her children—fostered, birthed, and adopted. Cooper Cafritz details her "spectacularly lucky professional life" in contrast to a series of brutal and tortuous events that left her an "emotional wreck" in her twenties (33). Art brought her comfort in the tumultuous times. Studying and settling in D.C. enhanced Cooper Cafritz's exposure to...

The Vulnerable Spectator

The 1970s ushered in a new cinephilic culture for viewers. In reviewing the films of this era, columnist Amelie Hastie is struck by their resonance for our current political realities and concerns surrounding civil rights, governmental authority, and personal surveillance. To the author, revisiting or integrating the 1970s into contemporary film culture is a political act born out of resistance to both present-day politics and historical narratives. Through her discussion of films including Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman, Gordon Parks's The Learning Tree, Barbara Loden's Wanda, and Diane Kurys's Peppermint Soda, Hastie finds a welcome response to the current era of grotesque political nostalgia enamored with the “greatness” of oppression, including the slavery of African Americans, the internment of immigrants, and the stripping of women's power.

Nature in Black and White: Summer Camps and Racialized Landscapes in the Photography of Gordon Parks

Nature in Black and White: Summer Camps and Racialized Landscapes in the Photography of Gordon Parks

Remembering Sedat Pakay 1945–2016

Sedat Pakay, whose name will always be associated with the most intimate portrayals we have of James Baldwin, died on 20 August 2016 at his home in Claverack, NY. Sedat was born in Istanbul, Turkey, where he graduated from Robert College. He studied at the Yale School of Art under Walker Evans, Paul Strand, and Herbert Matter and became a successful photo-journalist and filmmaker. His subjects for photographic portraits included Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko, Josef Albers, Gordon Parks, and, especially, James Baldwin. Pakay’s best-known films are Walker Evans/America (2000) and, as all Baldwin scholars and friends know, James Baldwin: From Another Place, filmed in Istanbul in 1970.

FROM THE VIOLENT “BLACK BUCK” STEREOTYPE TO THE “BLACK HERO”: REPRESENTATIONS OF AFRICAN AMERICANS AND BLACK MASCULINITY IN AMERICAN CINEMA

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the representation of black masculinity in four popular Hollywood movies. In the first part of the paper, the key terms and analytical points are developed, based on the relevant literature from the fields of cultural, film and media studies, African American studies and black feminism. A special emphasis is placed on the transition from a stereotype of the “Black Buck”, a common on-screen representation of a violent, vengeful, highly sexual black male to the “Black Hero”, created in the Blaxploitation movies and further developed in more recent movies. The four movies that are closely analyzed are Sergio Corbucci’s Django from 1966, Gordon Parks’s Shaft from 1971 and their contemporary adaptations, Shaft (2000), directed by John Singleton and Django Unchained (2012), directed by Quentin Tarantino. One of the tasks of the research is to examine how the stereotype of a violent black thug has been deconstructed and modified in more recent movies to usher the “Black Hero” character.

From Classroom to Asylum

From Classroom to Asylum

Harlem in Furs: Race and Fashion in the Photography of Gordon Parks

Harlem in Furs: Race and Fashion in the Photography of Gordon Parks

Documenting Art and History: The “Back to Fort Scott” Materials in the Gordon Parks Papers

Documenting Art and History: The “Back to Fort Scott” Materials in the Gordon Parks Papers

Between the open and the hidden: clothing, segregation, and the feminine counter-archive in the photographs of Gordon Parks

In this article I analyse the photographs Gordon Parks produced for the Life photo-essay The restraints: open and hidden, which depicts Jim Crow segregation in Mobile, Alabama. Drawing on Jacques Derrida's (1996) attention to the archival unconscious and Hortense Spillers’ (1987) concept of ‘ungendering’, I argue that Parks’ photographs of women's and girls’ clothing manifest his background in fashion photography and highlight the counter- archival pressure black femininity places on Jim Crow segregation and the photo-essay itself.

Gordon Parks at Atlanta's High Museum of Art

Gordon Parks at Atlanta's High Museum of Art