The Art of Photography: Exploring the Work of Gordon Parks
As we delve into the world of photography, it's essential to appreciate the work of pioneers who have shaped the medium. One such photographer is Gordon Parks, whose body of work continues to inspire and influence artists to this day. In this article, we'll explore Parks' life, career, and artistic vision, highlighting the significance of his photographs and their enduring impact on the world.
The Power of Symbolism in Photography
Let's examine two images from Parks' collection that showcase his mastery of symbolism. The first image depicts a figure being prepared for burial, with a prominent cross element that highlights its Christian religious significance. This stark contrast between life and death serves as a powerful reminder of the human condition. On the opposite side of the image, we see a young boy struggling with illness, symbolizing hope and resilience in the face of adversity. The juxtaposition of these two images underscores Parks' ability to convey complex emotions through photography.
Parks' Approach to Photography
One of the most striking aspects of Parks' work is his approach to photography. He was never one to intervene or dictate scenes; instead, he aimed to observe and capture reality as it unfolded. This approach allowed him to create intimate and powerful portraits that spoke directly to the viewer. As Parks himself said, "I'm not a photographer, I'm a storyteller." His photographs are indeed stories, imbued with emotion, empathy, and a deep understanding of the human experience.
The Photographer's Eye
Parks' photographic eye was attuned to the details of everyday life, often focusing on the marginalized and oppressed. He was particularly drawn to the stories of African American communities, capturing their struggles and triumphs through his lens. This attention to detail and commitment to telling important stories earned Parks a reputation as one of the most respected photographers of his time.
A Life of Passion and Creativity
Parks' life was marked by passion, creativity, and a deep sense of purpose. He was not only an accomplished photographer but also a skilled pianist in both jazz and classical music, a composer, poet, painter, writer, and film director. His work spanned multiple disciplines, reflecting his boundless curiosity and artistic talent. Parks' story serves as a reminder that creativity knows no bounds, and that the most innovative artists often excel across multiple fields.
A Legacy of Inspiration
As we conclude our exploration of Gordon Parks' work, it's essential to acknowledge the lasting impact he had on the world of photography. His photographs continue to inspire artists, writers, and filmmakers, offering a powerful reminder of the importance of empathy, compassion, and storytelling. By examining his life and career, we gain insight into the creative process and the power of art to shape our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
A New Era: Live Ask Me Anything
In an effort to engage with our audience in new and exciting ways, we'll be launching a live "Ask Me Anything" series, where we'll answer your questions about photography, art, and creativity. Each month, we'll dedicate a special episode to addressing the topics you care most about. Stay tuned for details on when this initiative will begin, and don't hesitate to reach out with your questions or comments.
Conclusion
As we conclude our journey through the world of Gordon Parks, it's clear that his work continues to captivate audiences around the globe. His photographs, infused with emotion, empathy, and a deep understanding of the human condition, serve as a powerful reminder of the enduring impact of art on our lives. We hope this article has inspired you to explore more of Parks' work and the world of photography in general. Join us next time for another episode of The Art of Photography, where we'll delve into new and exciting topics, and don't forget to follow us for updates on upcoming episodes and live events.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eneverybody welcome back to another episode of the art of photography my name is Ted Forbes and today our video is going to be on one of my all-time favorite photographers a gentleman named Gordon Parks and before we get to that I want to talk about the show just a little bit because in the last episode I asked you guys to email me or tweet or Facebook or whatever and give me some opinions about where you guys would like to see the show headed what you would like to do and I received a ton of response on that and I'm about done getting through all my emails and I thank you for that it helps me shape the show because I really feel like we're at a point this year where we've had a lot of success with the show we've got a lot of following I've got a lot of viewers a lot of people really enjoying it but I want to figure out how we can take it up to the next level what we can do and so I've got a lot of ideas on this and I want to announce two of them today I don't want to announce everything once because I don't want it not to happen and then I've told you we're going to do something and then we don't end up doing it but I am ready to announce two of them and so what we're going to do here is going into the new year here in 2014 I in the past one have done a an audio show with my friend Wade Griffith called the photography show and it's an audio podcast it's available on iTunes and stitcher and places like that we're going to bring it back and based on a couple suggestions from people who actually gave me the idea part of the reason that we drop doing it was because Wade is a full-time photographer now I've got a full time job at the Museum and I do this podcast and so our time and our schedules are really hard to link up sometimes so what we're going to do is kind of go at it like this we're gonna go ahead and bring the show back and I will do it once a week and if Wade can join us that's fine if you can't find then I'll go ahead and do the show on my own will still cover stuff but it's kind of interesting because I think the thought is is that you know we deliver this show via iTunes YouTube all the video places you can you can watch it on and part of the problem is a lot of people are mobile they're in the car and it's easier to listen to something than it is to try and watch it and hopefully don't wreck in fact don't do that if that's the case you know watch it when you have time so anyway so going into that and I think one of the challenges too is doing a complete audio show on a visual medium is kind of difficult so it'll be challenging but we are going to bring that back you know probably within the next two weeks as soon as I get some things ironed out and we're going to bring back with a better production workflow and we groove that we can get in and we'll go ahead and I'll be doing it every week and as much as Wade can join me then we will do that as well I might do some interviews with other photographers on there depends on who we can get so anyways some cool things we've got planned there this show will continue don't worry we're just going to add the audio show to it the other thing I've been wanting to do for a long time this is the second thing I'm announced today is that I've been very interested in doing live video for a while and we've gotten to a point with technology where a lot of this is starting to become possible now and this is what's interesting to me because you know YouTube is opened up live streaming obviously there's Google Hangouts there's stuff like that and there's also a wonderful app that I found that's a mobile app that you can get I know I think it's on androids definitely on iOS if you're using Apple mobile products iPad iPhone and the like an app called hang with and hang with is really cool because it enables you to do live broadcasting it has a chat on there where you can interact with the live broadcast and it also has notifications built-in so if you want to follow me on there and I'm not ready to do this yet but I'll set it up soon and I'll let you guys in all the details you can download an app called hang with and I've been testing a little bit on and off this weakness seems to work really well so what I would like to do is a show that we can do maybe once a month that is live and I want to broadcast that on hang with and on YouTube and basically it's a chance to ask me anything so we'll do a QA so you can get on there live in the chat and you'll be able to just ask me any questions it can be things we've talked about on the show it can be things about photography in general you know just whatever you guys want to do so we'll plan on doing you know maybe 30 minutes show or something once a month now maybe longer if we'll have to see kind of how this goes and what kind of groove we get into so I am NOT ready to announce the first show yet but this is the other thing I'm working on so hopefully in the next month here and what we'll do is we'll find like a monthly time and I know that we have a large audience that is not in the u.s. and so what I might do is move the time around to accommodate schedule so you will be able to watch the broadcast afterwards we're going to archive everything so that's not a big deal so if you do not able to catch it live and maybe we'll have a way to email in questions and stuff just in case you're not able to do that so we'll figure out all the details but be thinking about that and if you've got questions and you want to send them to me or if you have suggestions on what you might like to see what the show as well feel free to get to holding me on Twitter Facebook whatever or you can email me directly I am not afraid to give up my email address it is no one got her at gmail.com in oon EG oth URT at gmail.com so anyway I'd love to hear from you and thank you guys and girls that have already sent me suggestions is helped tremendously and I'm really interested in seeing what we can do with the show moving forward that is going to make it better and really push it over the edge and really get that open communication going between me and you guys I'm really interested in really serious about that so anyways so two new things photography shows coming back which is the audio show I will have all the details on that by the next episode as well as we're going to do once a month a live ask me anything kind of session so those two things are coming up and I hope you guys will stay tuned and come participate in that on to today's subject we are going to talk about photographer named Gordon Parks and if you're not familiar with Gordon Parks to me the reason I haven't covered him and talked to him talk much about him on the show before is that he you know he's such a brilliant mind such a brilliant figure in the history of photography that it's almost like it's really hard to condense down but I think it's going to flow naturally with a lot of stuff we've been talking about in the last couple episodes when we've done a lot of photography literature kinds of stuff we've talked about very specific photographers in their point in history what made them important and I think Gordon Parks is a really natural guy to cover next and Gordon Parks died a couple years ago at the age of 93 he was actually born in 1912 so he would be over a hundred if you were alive today but probably one of the you know photographers in the 20th century who took everything by storm and its really limiting I think to define Gordon Parks as a photographer you're looking at a man who grew up as an african-american in the United States and unquestionably the most dark time in American history were segregation and racism and all those things were at their height and dealt with a lot of issues along those concerns and you have a guy who growing up was probably told he wouldn't have ever amount to anything and it's probably one of the greatest cultural figures in American history regardless of race color gender anything he went on to you know push past all of that and I think that's what's really kind of just it's impressive and humbling and inspiring and that's what makes Gordon Park so amazing why didn't one do this I won't look at his work because he was an amazing photographer I mean I can't think of any other photographer that I've either known or known of that has had the range that Gordon Parks has in terms of the types of things he shoots just this day you know you're looking at a guy who shoots in many styles in this has many statements with his photography and we're going to get into that and I want to show you kind of just a retrospective it's really hard to whittle down his career into enough photos just to show on the show but anyway I hope that that opens your mind the other thing that's interesting about Gordon and I said it's it's really difficult to define him as a photographer because you're dealing with somebody who really was very multi-talented on a number of levels and you know I really the term polymath gets irritating to me but you know polymath is usually term describe somebody like Leonardo da Vinci or you know some figure who has a such a wide skillset is able to do all these kinds of different things that you know the polymath aspect of it and I think if anybody could come too close to that term it would be Gordon Parks you're looking at somebody who was a writer an author a poet an oil painter photographer he was a musician he played piano and was also composer wrote a concerto for piano and orchestra wrote the libretto and scored the music for a ballet on the life of Martin Luther King he was a film director most famous for directing shaft which is you know the famous blaxploitation film that came out in 1971 I and like the depth of Gordon Parks is just it's stunning and it's amazing and I remember the first time I really was kind of thrown into the world of Gordon Parks the museum that I currently work at this was before I worked here the Dallas Museum of Art was place I've always been to when I was a kid and school trips and stuff and I remember coming to a Gordon parks exhibition called believed the exhibition was titled half past autumn it's also the name of a documentary that's very good that I would recommend you guys look for anyway I remember just kind of being blown away at this exhibition just I mean all these things I'm saying like this range of talent that he's got the range of mediums color photography that's just amazing just as good as saw leader or any of those guys black-and-white photography which in some ways captured all the wonderful things throughout the history of particularly monochrome photography with people like Edward ii steel it's up to probably people like richard avedon with the fashion photography that he did and just explore this range of stuff and have this amazing career and he died shortly thereafter and so this is somebody that i mean i would be just completely floored and humbled to have met but like i said i mean there's a lot to Gordon Parks and I know I'm kind of rambling through it right here I don't want to give a lot of specifics on things just because it takes all day but I think those are the the things that are important so you have somebody who's an african-american who growing up at the worst time possible to be an african-american in far as being encouraged to go to college or be encouraged to have a career or make anything of themselves and he overcame all of that and went on to be one of the greatest minds and one of the the greatest talents that this country has ever offered I believe so without further ado I want to look at some work because that's the important part and anyway so come on over and let's check out the work of Gordon Parks okay so we're going to take a look at some works by the amazing American photographer Gordon Parks and I'm going to use Pinterest to do this like we do in most of our episodes and you can follow me on Pinterest if you go to pinterest.com slash Ted Forbes and if you're not familiar with Pinterest it's an excellent way of bookmarking images and it's a great tool that I love to use for doing these shows if you follow me on here as most people have noticed you can start seeing what the next show is going to be when I start voraciously pinning away and anyway if you want to go look at some of these images see the bookmarks where they came from this is also a great resource on that so I like to use these in the episodes so you can go look at them later as well so if you go to pinterest.com slash Ted forbes you will see all of the boards that are here in boards or ways of categorizing and collecting your pins they like collections basically now if I go down here and they have one for Gordon Parks it's almost all the way at the bottom because it's what puts the new ones and I've been working on this for a little while you can go ahead and open it up and the first thing I want you to notice about Gordon is just without clicking on any of the pins yet it's just scrolling down and looking at the thumbnails and seeing the wide range I mean this looks like a board of about four or five photographers and is mind-blowing just how good Gordon was and just the stark contrast of styles that you're going to see but I think there really is this element of mr. parks that brings this together and it's the sense you know I think a lot of times we look at these things and when you can start to analyze in terms of compositional guidelines like rule thirds rule dodds whatever and while Gordon will adhere to these at times that's not really what you're looking for in his work he's not doing anything that's seriously unconventional necessarily it's very success accessible imagery but I think what makes Gordon's work really special to me is the sense of humanity it's mostly people and that's kind of what he shot the sense of storytelling where something is being said with the image that creates at least a sense in your in your own mind of you know what is going on at peaks of curiosity you want to know more maybe you start to assimilate conclusions yourself as to what is going on in some of these images and I know this is largely weirdly out of order and I'm going to try and take these as best I can but anyway that's the main carrier way I want you to take with Gordon Parks and we're going to look at some of these images and this first one I want to bring up is one of it was an early image when when I started familiar as myself years ago with Gordon when I saw that exhibition this was in the exhibition and this image to me is particularly striking because it brings a lot of the civil rights stuff that you know Gordon had to deal with a lot of the racial segregation and what you see here is you know this mother and her daughter and their sunday clothes in front of a department store in Mobile Alabama and they're at the colored entrance which is what you know blacks were forced to use at that time and there's what strikes me about this image is that it says so much and at the same time it's so beautiful depicting one of the ugliest parts of American history and I mean it leaves you kind of speechless in a lot of ways everything is beautiful from the you know the this neon sign with this bold red and then just I love the muted colors of you know the woman's dress and the blue and even the red dresses of the women in the back the neon signs that you see everywhere the way the light works in this composition but it tells a story and it really brings you your your focus in on this mother and her little girl and what could possibly be going through their heads and you know this to me I mean part of it is the social era that it was taken in the statement it was making but it is such a strong image on so many levels and it's not oh there's a pretty picture I mean it is a very pretty picture but it's it's there's something underlying to that that makes it even more deep to me and more kind of well it takes you back I mean it's really been hard for me to describe as you know you can hear me stumbling through right now but anyway Gordon it's very impressive the walks of life the types of situations all the things he was able to accomplish in his career where if you have you contrast this image to different place different time different people this is this high society image very New York I assume that's where it was made but of these high society figures that again this use of color in this that is up there with the colors that we've talked about the Fred hedgehogs the salt leaders of the world you know with this woman's red dress and these are not any images to get but the way the color works in this image where that red really is the central focus on that the only other colors you see in here are these muted blues and yellows and even the cream-colored whites that are in the image and the way that comes together is is amazing and it's a completely different statement it's a different commentary it's a different walk of life contrast this once again with this image and I know I'm intentionally bouncing around on you on here because I'm trying to make a point with the range of skill that Gordon had and we're just looking at the color photographs you know but this couple in in Mobile Alabama that are seated on this red couch again the red what other colors are sticking out at you part of this is the technology that's being used in terms of what film but it really makes a statement but look at the style of this is completely different this is almost DN Arbus in nature with this you know double portrait of a couple sitting under another portrait but the genders are matching up and it there's just so many interesting things about this and then you contrast that even with portraits of famous people he did during his 20-year career Life magazine where most of his prolific work was done but here's a this is a portrait of Giacometti the famous sculptor and there's several in this series and you know again now we're in more of a style of somebody like an Arnold Newman with these environmental portraits and just kind of I mean Giacometti looked a lot like his work he's one of those guys and so what a fun subject to shoot but you know these these odd wrinkly skinny sculptures that he did of human figures and and just kind of his own persona and how that fit into that the way the hand that's part of the sculpture on the left side of the image works with the hand it's his head's resting on and it's amazing and then you have work like this that that is very suggestive very storytelling this is reflection of these women standing near water presumably on a beach and it says so much you don't see human faces but we're not detached from the human experience and who are these people you know what are they doing I mean yeah you could break this down to rule of thirds rule of odds you know contrast reflection patterns but that's not what this image is about and I think Gordon's career largely was based around that as well some very well-known portraits of Muhammad Ali that we're done and this is one of my favorites and again it you know this portrait that just says so much of Ali let's look at some different portraits of Ali for instance we have this one which is more of this classical second school of portrait photography or even Stieglitz in that matter if we go over to this one it's more of a you know street almost robert frank kind of feel to it where Muhammad Ali is sitting here signing autographs of his own picture which is where you get the repetition in the image and it speaks volumes it's still very strong and it creates a ton of interest and is I mean I find it fascinating and amazing you know and a lot of these social shots that he did this is a some ballerina school of young ballerinas that you know is almost oh and more in the line of composition of somebody like a way maggle stone where it's not perfect composition the cameras may even really straight but it still tells a story and there's still something so beautiful about this whereas if you have the more formal compositions this one is very striking of this kid missing a leg on crutches and it's just a portrait from behind coming through this door the you know it's hard to really sit here and just talk about these images on some kind of scholar level because there's so much deeper than that and they they cover so much more ground something like this with these nuns are you know with these women and you have the the arc of the triangle or this pyramid shape they're standing in you have the blurred out faces in the back to become a series of repetition of pattern with the faces with these with these some habits over the top and anyway it's just simply beautiful and then all the way over to this which is the famous Langston Hughes and this is more of an environmental portrait in the style of what guys like Arnold Newman would be doing at the time but in the same time it's a little bit different and the whole metaphorical use of the hand being framed I just find you know amazing some of us better known images this is another one of a guy looking at a manhole in Harlem I mean how do you beat this stuff I mean it's just it's amazing it didn't get much better it's amazing another image if we're going to look at some of the iconic stuff here's another Muhammad Ali which was one of the most famous believed for Life magazine where you have the the whole nature of Muhammad Ali being this boxer is captured in the intensity with the high contrast with these extreme lighting with the sweat beads that are coming off his head with the look on his face and that you know trademark Muhammad Ali the the fighter eyes that he's got which is just you know mind-blowing okay so I want to talk about this is probably arguably one of his most famous images and this is named American Gothic and it was named after the famous American painting and there is a social commentary that was intentionally being made here this is a woman named Ella Watson and Ella Watson was the cleaner at the office of the Farm Security Administration now I want to stop just a little bit and give you a little bit of historical information if you're not familiar with Farm Security Administration this is part of the New Deal from FDR and like many admin's Works Progress programs that were set up you have the firm secure administration which was set up to improve the lives of rural workers in the United States and mainly dealing with people who are doing far and whatnot during the Great Depression so setup as being kind of an assistive agency that would try to help with what was in the u.s. a pretty dire situation at that time Gordon Parks was in a position where he was hired by this administration because they did have a very small but very successful photography program which employed and used works from major major photographers and some of the most famous act it would be really interesting to do an entire show on the Farm Security Administration's photography program sometime because it's it's extremely significant particularly in American history but this is Ella Watson and being inspired by racism and segregation and being thrown out of restaurants and the like Gordon took this image of her in front of the American flag with her mom and he took it to his boss who about freaked out and had a heart attack and said that it was a complete abomination on America and and would really get the whole program shut down because you know we look at this today and it probably doesn't have the same meaning for us but at the time this was a statement on America with this cleaning woman who's black in front of the American flag during a very strange time in American history that that Gordon was very sadly in the middle of and anyway so this image which has gone on to be one of his most famous images was really kind of buried and and he was encouraged to go ahead and continue shooting pictures of this woman her daily life and I do have some of those in the set here she is reading to some girls same woman and but you know it's just really weird when you have a statement that's so bold like that that really means so much a couple other things I want to run through really clearly you can go through here on your own and look at these images but Gordon also at times would implore sense of motion when possible and I think some of these are my favorite images just on an aesthetic level these two women standing in front of a merry-go-round and the way that the slow shutter speed was used to capture this and that you know I really think this brings a sense of tempo a sense of motion to these images that just makes them beautiful I've got there's a portrait in here he did if Gloria Vanderbilt ins this one right here which you know again the motion in the back it creates a sense that she's moving but also this carefree very beautiful persona of glory Vanderbilt and the pink dress with the orange bottom on it I mean it's just it's gorgeous it's it's exciting it brings this this extra dimension into the photography that you know I just think it's brilliant a couple of their images I want to end on here as we go through one of the things he did for Life magazine was a series of photo essays and so basically they would send him to go photograph and tell a story about what's going on several these happen in Harlem and there's some amazing photographs I love this of Harlem in the snow for instance or another one that's one of my favorites this is also very powerful sorry this is not Harlem this is Alabama but these people hanging from trees that I mean there's an obviously very dark statement that's being made and an image like this something like this with these boys playing a fire hydrant that you know is so very you know New York and a lot of ways but at the same time it's also kind of timeless and you know all you see are Silhouette figures but there's so much story being told here and so much curiosity it's being created as a result of this that you know it it is what it is which is brilliant another one that's amazing these you know figures in these dark hoods descending a staircase and look at the contrast that's going on in this image I mean it's very menacing in very dark but at the same time you have this line going through the middle of the composition diagonally being the staircase it divides the composition on the top part you have the the hooded figures that are kind of creepy quite frankly and at the bottom you have light coming in a window which is completely it's like darkness and hope wrapped into one you know in these terms like I said there is a ton of photos here and I encourage you to go check out these boards and look through them here's another one I'm already getting away with what I was trying to talk about a second ago so sorry for the ATD here but this is outside looking in this was an image that was in found in a box after Gordon died of unpublished photographs of transparency so slide film and I mean god what a social commentary and social statement this is of these these black kids looking into a playground behind a fence I mean it's very moving work and you know if you're not moved check your pulse because I don't see how you could not be what I want to end on here though and wrap this up is I was talking about the photo journalistic stuff so to come back around and like I said Gordon had a 20-year career Life magazine and on assignment this was part of a spread that was done and stories were written to go along with these photos of this was a family in Rio de Janeiro living in a slum and exposing some things that maybe people didn't know about to the world and that's what these pictures were from and the human element of this little girl in Rio crying next to the figure in bed who suggestive of either being sick or dead even and these are very difficult images I think still today this is a what you're looking at here's a spread from the actual Life magazine and I this is really mind-blowing the sense if you look at the image on the left and the image on the right and I may get this slightly wrong and I apologize in advance but the one on the left I believe is a figure that was being prepared for burial but you have the cross element that's that's brought in there obviously the Christian religious significance of it and on the right hand side is this boy who is sick and you see that same kind of symbolism almost taken in this image whether or not that was intended by by Gordon that was what was in the spread the story goes is that that this boy who was sick and on the right is very ill and is basically parents are gone and he's in a position of raising his own family in this slum and I mean really one of the worst kinds of human condition you can think of as a family finding for itself like that and one of the things that's always troubled me and I you know about this kind of photography whether it be war photography or you know you hit the National Geographic Geographic photographers talk about this a lot but it's the sense that you're there as a photographer you're there to observe and you're not there to intervene and one of my favorite images that I'm looking at today is this and Gordon didn't take this this is Gordon and he's got his Rolleiflex slung over his back and he's helping bring one of the children and his family up to be washed and this shows that here's a guy with a heart the size of nothing else which is kind of you know it really I think brings a lot of Gordon together like I said I never knew Gordon never got to meet him I'm sure he had a kind hearted nature in a soul that was generous and I just loved this image of him actually pitching in and helping one it it enhances the darkness of the situation but two it shows that you know here's a guy working for a major United States magazine at the time when that's really taking off who has a heart and soul to him anyway look through here you know we could go through all day I mean I knew ideas stuck on this because there's so many images the famous Canadian pianist Glenn Gould and the the sense of drama and everything Glenn Gould that's you know brought out in these images but go look through these yourself there's there's more here that we didn't even get to today and what kind of say that is the work of Gordon Parks I'm sorry this episode I mean he deserves a whole documentary and there is one if you go check out half past autumn highly recommended okay so we've been checking out the work of Gordon Parks and I hope you guys have come away with this with I mean there's so much you could come away with on this I mean just but I think the most important thing is that inspiration of what is possible I think it's also the sensibility of I think largely in like I said I never knew Gordon obviously but the the intensity of what kind of a person he was which really I believe comes out in the work it comes out in the storytelling it comes out in just this prolific over of work that he's sharing with the world that exists now and like I said I mean it's really hard I mean you know photography is something that's so important to me and I'm sure it is to you too and it's really hard when somebody says who's your favorite photographer I'm sure I have guys that are my favorites but it you know you can't put Gordon into that because he'll be your favorite photographer but I mean he blows so much out of the water in terms of what he was able to accomplish during his life in his career and like I said it wasn't just as a photographer I mean he was a guy who was an accomplished pianist in both jazz and classical music was a composer wrote poetry did paintings wrote books you know he was it was a film director I mean there were 10 films that he did to various degree degrees of success shaft being the most well known of that that lot but anyway I hope this is been inspirational to you on some level and like it certainly is to me and remember we got some new stuff coming up with the show so stay tuned bye next week I will announce but we are going to bring the photography show back and we are going to do a live ask me anything that will we'll do once a month and I'm not real sure when that's going to start but I'll have all the details worked out so it'll be real simple and real clear with you guys so if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment tweet me email me whatever you got to do and I'd be happy to address it anyway once again guys that's been the art of photography and thanks for watching I'll see you next time latereverybody welcome back to another episode of the art of photography my name is Ted Forbes and today our video is going to be on one of my all-time favorite photographers a gentleman named Gordon Parks and before we get to that I want to talk about the show just a little bit because in the last episode I asked you guys to email me or tweet or Facebook or whatever and give me some opinions about where you guys would like to see the show headed what you would like to do and I received a ton of response on that and I'm about done getting through all my emails and I thank you for that it helps me shape the show because I really feel like we're at a point this year where we've had a lot of success with the show we've got a lot of following I've got a lot of viewers a lot of people really enjoying it but I want to figure out how we can take it up to the next level what we can do and so I've got a lot of ideas on this and I want to announce two of them today I don't want to announce everything once because I don't want it not to happen and then I've told you we're going to do something and then we don't end up doing it but I am ready to announce two of them and so what we're going to do here is going into the new year here in 2014 I in the past one have done a an audio show with my friend Wade Griffith called the photography show and it's an audio podcast it's available on iTunes and stitcher and places like that we're going to bring it back and based on a couple suggestions from people who actually gave me the idea part of the reason that we drop doing it was because Wade is a full-time photographer now I've got a full time job at the Museum and I do this podcast and so our time and our schedules are really hard to link up sometimes so what we're going to do is kind of go at it like this we're gonna go ahead and bring the show back and I will do it once a week and if Wade can join us that's fine if you can't find then I'll go ahead and do the show on my own will still cover stuff but it's kind of interesting because I think the thought is is that you know we deliver this show via iTunes YouTube all the video places you can you can watch it on and part of the problem is a lot of people are mobile they're in the car and it's easier to listen to something than it is to try and watch it and hopefully don't wreck in fact don't do that if that's the case you know watch it when you have time so anyway so going into that and I think one of the challenges too is doing a complete audio show on a visual medium is kind of difficult so it'll be challenging but we are going to bring that back you know probably within the next two weeks as soon as I get some things ironed out and we're going to bring back with a better production workflow and we groove that we can get in and we'll go ahead and I'll be doing it every week and as much as Wade can join me then we will do that as well I might do some interviews with other photographers on there depends on who we can get so anyways some cool things we've got planned there this show will continue don't worry we're just going to add the audio show to it the other thing I've been wanting to do for a long time this is the second thing I'm announced today is that I've been very interested in doing live video for a while and we've gotten to a point with technology where a lot of this is starting to become possible now and this is what's interesting to me because you know YouTube is opened up live streaming obviously there's Google Hangouts there's stuff like that and there's also a wonderful app that I found that's a mobile app that you can get I know I think it's on androids definitely on iOS if you're using Apple mobile products iPad iPhone and the like an app called hang with and hang with is really cool because it enables you to do live broadcasting it has a chat on there where you can interact with the live broadcast and it also has notifications built-in so if you want to follow me on there and I'm not ready to do this yet but I'll set it up soon and I'll let you guys in all the details you can download an app called hang with and I've been testing a little bit on and off this weakness seems to work really well so what I would like to do is a show that we can do maybe once a month that is live and I want to broadcast that on hang with and on YouTube and basically it's a chance to ask me anything so we'll do a QA so you can get on there live in the chat and you'll be able to just ask me any questions it can be things we've talked about on the show it can be things about photography in general you know just whatever you guys want to do so we'll plan on doing you know maybe 30 minutes show or something once a month now maybe longer if we'll have to see kind of how this goes and what kind of groove we get into so I am NOT ready to announce the first show yet but this is the other thing I'm working on so hopefully in the next month here and what we'll do is we'll find like a monthly time and I know that we have a large audience that is not in the u.s. and so what I might do is move the time around to accommodate schedule so you will be able to watch the broadcast afterwards we're going to archive everything so that's not a big deal so if you do not able to catch it live and maybe we'll have a way to email in questions and stuff just in case you're not able to do that so we'll figure out all the details but be thinking about that and if you've got questions and you want to send them to me or if you have suggestions on what you might like to see what the show as well feel free to get to holding me on Twitter Facebook whatever or you can email me directly I am not afraid to give up my email address it is no one got her at gmail.com in oon EG oth URT at gmail.com so anyway I'd love to hear from you and thank you guys and girls that have already sent me suggestions is helped tremendously and I'm really interested in seeing what we can do with the show moving forward that is going to make it better and really push it over the edge and really get that open communication going between me and you guys I'm really interested in really serious about that so anyways so two new things photography shows coming back which is the audio show I will have all the details on that by the next episode as well as we're going to do once a month a live ask me anything kind of session so those two things are coming up and I hope you guys will stay tuned and come participate in that on to today's subject we are going to talk about photographer named Gordon Parks and if you're not familiar with Gordon Parks to me the reason I haven't covered him and talked to him talk much about him on the show before is that he you know he's such a brilliant mind such a brilliant figure in the history of photography that it's almost like it's really hard to condense down but I think it's going to flow naturally with a lot of stuff we've been talking about in the last couple episodes when we've done a lot of photography literature kinds of stuff we've talked about very specific photographers in their point in history what made them important and I think Gordon Parks is a really natural guy to cover next and Gordon Parks died a couple years ago at the age of 93 he was actually born in 1912 so he would be over a hundred if you were alive today but probably one of the you know photographers in the 20th century who took everything by storm and its really limiting I think to define Gordon Parks as a photographer you're looking at a man who grew up as an african-american in the United States and unquestionably the most dark time in American history were segregation and racism and all those things were at their height and dealt with a lot of issues along those concerns and you have a guy who growing up was probably told he wouldn't have ever amount to anything and it's probably one of the greatest cultural figures in American history regardless of race color gender anything he went on to you know push past all of that and I think that's what's really kind of just it's impressive and humbling and inspiring and that's what makes Gordon Park so amazing why didn't one do this I won't look at his work because he was an amazing photographer I mean I can't think of any other photographer that I've either known or known of that has had the range that Gordon Parks has in terms of the types of things he shoots just this day you know you're looking at a guy who shoots in many styles in this has many statements with his photography and we're going to get into that and I want to show you kind of just a retrospective it's really hard to whittle down his career into enough photos just to show on the show but anyway I hope that that opens your mind the other thing that's interesting about Gordon and I said it's it's really difficult to define him as a photographer because you're dealing with somebody who really was very multi-talented on a number of levels and you know I really the term polymath gets irritating to me but you know polymath is usually term describe somebody like Leonardo da Vinci or you know some figure who has a such a wide skillset is able to do all these kinds of different things that you know the polymath aspect of it and I think if anybody could come too close to that term it would be Gordon Parks you're looking at somebody who was a writer an author a poet an oil painter photographer he was a musician he played piano and was also composer wrote a concerto for piano and orchestra wrote the libretto and scored the music for a ballet on the life of Martin Luther King he was a film director most famous for directing shaft which is you know the famous blaxploitation film that came out in 1971 I and like the depth of Gordon Parks is just it's stunning and it's amazing and I remember the first time I really was kind of thrown into the world of Gordon Parks the museum that I currently work at this was before I worked here the Dallas Museum of Art was place I've always been to when I was a kid and school trips and stuff and I remember coming to a Gordon parks exhibition called believed the exhibition was titled half past autumn it's also the name of a documentary that's very good that I would recommend you guys look for anyway I remember just kind of being blown away at this exhibition just I mean all these things I'm saying like this range of talent that he's got the range of mediums color photography that's just amazing just as good as saw leader or any of those guys black-and-white photography which in some ways captured all the wonderful things throughout the history of particularly monochrome photography with people like Edward ii steel it's up to probably people like richard avedon with the fashion photography that he did and just explore this range of stuff and have this amazing career and he died shortly thereafter and so this is somebody that i mean i would be just completely floored and humbled to have met but like i said i mean there's a lot to Gordon Parks and I know I'm kind of rambling through it right here I don't want to give a lot of specifics on things just because it takes all day but I think those are the the things that are important so you have somebody who's an african-american who growing up at the worst time possible to be an african-american in far as being encouraged to go to college or be encouraged to have a career or make anything of themselves and he overcame all of that and went on to be one of the greatest minds and one of the the greatest talents that this country has ever offered I believe so without further ado I want to look at some work because that's the important part and anyway so come on over and let's check out the work of Gordon Parks okay so we're going to take a look at some works by the amazing American photographer Gordon Parks and I'm going to use Pinterest to do this like we do in most of our episodes and you can follow me on Pinterest if you go to pinterest.com slash Ted Forbes and if you're not familiar with Pinterest it's an excellent way of bookmarking images and it's a great tool that I love to use for doing these shows if you follow me on here as most people have noticed you can start seeing what the next show is going to be when I start voraciously pinning away and anyway if you want to go look at some of these images see the bookmarks where they came from this is also a great resource on that so I like to use these in the episodes so you can go look at them later as well so if you go to pinterest.com slash Ted forbes you will see all of the boards that are here in boards or ways of categorizing and collecting your pins they like collections basically now if I go down here and they have one for Gordon Parks it's almost all the way at the bottom because it's what puts the new ones and I've been working on this for a little while you can go ahead and open it up and the first thing I want you to notice about Gordon is just without clicking on any of the pins yet it's just scrolling down and looking at the thumbnails and seeing the wide range I mean this looks like a board of about four or five photographers and is mind-blowing just how good Gordon was and just the stark contrast of styles that you're going to see but I think there really is this element of mr. parks that brings this together and it's the sense you know I think a lot of times we look at these things and when you can start to analyze in terms of compositional guidelines like rule thirds rule dodds whatever and while Gordon will adhere to these at times that's not really what you're looking for in his work he's not doing anything that's seriously unconventional necessarily it's very success accessible imagery but I think what makes Gordon's work really special to me is the sense of humanity it's mostly people and that's kind of what he shot the sense of storytelling where something is being said with the image that creates at least a sense in your in your own mind of you know what is going on at peaks of curiosity you want to know more maybe you start to assimilate conclusions yourself as to what is going on in some of these images and I know this is largely weirdly out of order and I'm going to try and take these as best I can but anyway that's the main carrier way I want you to take with Gordon Parks and we're going to look at some of these images and this first one I want to bring up is one of it was an early image when when I started familiar as myself years ago with Gordon when I saw that exhibition this was in the exhibition and this image to me is particularly striking because it brings a lot of the civil rights stuff that you know Gordon had to deal with a lot of the racial segregation and what you see here is you know this mother and her daughter and their sunday clothes in front of a department store in Mobile Alabama and they're at the colored entrance which is what you know blacks were forced to use at that time and there's what strikes me about this image is that it says so much and at the same time it's so beautiful depicting one of the ugliest parts of American history and I mean it leaves you kind of speechless in a lot of ways everything is beautiful from the you know the this neon sign with this bold red and then just I love the muted colors of you know the woman's dress and the blue and even the red dresses of the women in the back the neon signs that you see everywhere the way the light works in this composition but it tells a story and it really brings you your your focus in on this mother and her little girl and what could possibly be going through their heads and you know this to me I mean part of it is the social era that it was taken in the statement it was making but it is such a strong image on so many levels and it's not oh there's a pretty picture I mean it is a very pretty picture but it's it's there's something underlying to that that makes it even more deep to me and more kind of well it takes you back I mean it's really been hard for me to describe as you know you can hear me stumbling through right now but anyway Gordon it's very impressive the walks of life the types of situations all the things he was able to accomplish in his career where if you have you contrast this image to different place different time different people this is this high society image very New York I assume that's where it was made but of these high society figures that again this use of color in this that is up there with the colors that we've talked about the Fred hedgehogs the salt leaders of the world you know with this woman's red dress and these are not any images to get but the way the color works in this image where that red really is the central focus on that the only other colors you see in here are these muted blues and yellows and even the cream-colored whites that are in the image and the way that comes together is is amazing and it's a completely different statement it's a different commentary it's a different walk of life contrast this once again with this image and I know I'm intentionally bouncing around on you on here because I'm trying to make a point with the range of skill that Gordon had and we're just looking at the color photographs you know but this couple in in Mobile Alabama that are seated on this red couch again the red what other colors are sticking out at you part of this is the technology that's being used in terms of what film but it really makes a statement but look at the style of this is completely different this is almost DN Arbus in nature with this you know double portrait of a couple sitting under another portrait but the genders are matching up and it there's just so many interesting things about this and then you contrast that even with portraits of famous people he did during his 20-year career Life magazine where most of his prolific work was done but here's a this is a portrait of Giacometti the famous sculptor and there's several in this series and you know again now we're in more of a style of somebody like an Arnold Newman with these environmental portraits and just kind of I mean Giacometti looked a lot like his work he's one of those guys and so what a fun subject to shoot but you know these these odd wrinkly skinny sculptures that he did of human figures and and just kind of his own persona and how that fit into that the way the hand that's part of the sculpture on the left side of the image works with the hand it's his head's resting on and it's amazing and then you have work like this that that is very suggestive very storytelling this is reflection of these women standing near water presumably on a beach and it says so much you don't see human faces but we're not detached from the human experience and who are these people you know what are they doing I mean yeah you could break this down to rule of thirds rule of odds you know contrast reflection patterns but that's not what this image is about and I think Gordon's career largely was based around that as well some very well-known portraits of Muhammad Ali that we're done and this is one of my favorites and again it you know this portrait that just says so much of Ali let's look at some different portraits of Ali for instance we have this one which is more of this classical second school of portrait photography or even Stieglitz in that matter if we go over to this one it's more of a you know street almost robert frank kind of feel to it where Muhammad Ali is sitting here signing autographs of his own picture which is where you get the repetition in the image and it speaks volumes it's still very strong and it creates a ton of interest and is I mean I find it fascinating and amazing you know and a lot of these social shots that he did this is a some ballerina school of young ballerinas that you know is almost oh and more in the line of composition of somebody like a way maggle stone where it's not perfect composition the cameras may even really straight but it still tells a story and there's still something so beautiful about this whereas if you have the more formal compositions this one is very striking of this kid missing a leg on crutches and it's just a portrait from behind coming through this door the you know it's hard to really sit here and just talk about these images on some kind of scholar level because there's so much deeper than that and they they cover so much more ground something like this with these nuns are you know with these women and you have the the arc of the triangle or this pyramid shape they're standing in you have the blurred out faces in the back to become a series of repetition of pattern with the faces with these with these some habits over the top and anyway it's just simply beautiful and then all the way over to this which is the famous Langston Hughes and this is more of an environmental portrait in the style of what guys like Arnold Newman would be doing at the time but in the same time it's a little bit different and the whole metaphorical use of the hand being framed I just find you know amazing some of us better known images this is another one of a guy looking at a manhole in Harlem I mean how do you beat this stuff I mean it's just it's amazing it didn't get much better it's amazing another image if we're going to look at some of the iconic stuff here's another Muhammad Ali which was one of the most famous believed for Life magazine where you have the the whole nature of Muhammad Ali being this boxer is captured in the intensity with the high contrast with these extreme lighting with the sweat beads that are coming off his head with the look on his face and that you know trademark Muhammad Ali the the fighter eyes that he's got which is just you know mind-blowing okay so I want to talk about this is probably arguably one of his most famous images and this is named American Gothic and it was named after the famous American painting and there is a social commentary that was intentionally being made here this is a woman named Ella Watson and Ella Watson was the cleaner at the office of the Farm Security Administration now I want to stop just a little bit and give you a little bit of historical information if you're not familiar with Farm Security Administration this is part of the New Deal from FDR and like many admin's Works Progress programs that were set up you have the firm secure administration which was set up to improve the lives of rural workers in the United States and mainly dealing with people who are doing far and whatnot during the Great Depression so setup as being kind of an assistive agency that would try to help with what was in the u.s. a pretty dire situation at that time Gordon Parks was in a position where he was hired by this administration because they did have a very small but very successful photography program which employed and used works from major major photographers and some of the most famous act it would be really interesting to do an entire show on the Farm Security Administration's photography program sometime because it's it's extremely significant particularly in American history but this is Ella Watson and being inspired by racism and segregation and being thrown out of restaurants and the like Gordon took this image of her in front of the American flag with her mom and he took it to his boss who about freaked out and had a heart attack and said that it was a complete abomination on America and and would really get the whole program shut down because you know we look at this today and it probably doesn't have the same meaning for us but at the time this was a statement on America with this cleaning woman who's black in front of the American flag during a very strange time in American history that that Gordon was very sadly in the middle of and anyway so this image which has gone on to be one of his most famous images was really kind of buried and and he was encouraged to go ahead and continue shooting pictures of this woman her daily life and I do have some of those in the set here she is reading to some girls same woman and but you know it's just really weird when you have a statement that's so bold like that that really means so much a couple other things I want to run through really clearly you can go through here on your own and look at these images but Gordon also at times would implore sense of motion when possible and I think some of these are my favorite images just on an aesthetic level these two women standing in front of a merry-go-round and the way that the slow shutter speed was used to capture this and that you know I really think this brings a sense of tempo a sense of motion to these images that just makes them beautiful I've got there's a portrait in here he did if Gloria Vanderbilt ins this one right here which you know again the motion in the back it creates a sense that she's moving but also this carefree very beautiful persona of glory Vanderbilt and the pink dress with the orange bottom on it I mean it's just it's gorgeous it's it's exciting it brings this this extra dimension into the photography that you know I just think it's brilliant a couple of their images I want to end on here as we go through one of the things he did for Life magazine was a series of photo essays and so basically they would send him to go photograph and tell a story about what's going on several these happen in Harlem and there's some amazing photographs I love this of Harlem in the snow for instance or another one that's one of my favorites this is also very powerful sorry this is not Harlem this is Alabama but these people hanging from trees that I mean there's an obviously very dark statement that's being made and an image like this something like this with these boys playing a fire hydrant that you know is so very you know New York and a lot of ways but at the same time it's also kind of timeless and you know all you see are Silhouette figures but there's so much story being told here and so much curiosity it's being created as a result of this that you know it it is what it is which is brilliant another one that's amazing these you know figures in these dark hoods descending a staircase and look at the contrast that's going on in this image I mean it's very menacing in very dark but at the same time you have this line going through the middle of the composition diagonally being the staircase it divides the composition on the top part you have the the hooded figures that are kind of creepy quite frankly and at the bottom you have light coming in a window which is completely it's like darkness and hope wrapped into one you know in these terms like I said there is a ton of photos here and I encourage you to go check out these boards and look through them here's another one I'm already getting away with what I was trying to talk about a second ago so sorry for the ATD here but this is outside looking in this was an image that was in found in a box after Gordon died of unpublished photographs of transparency so slide film and I mean god what a social commentary and social statement this is of these these black kids looking into a playground behind a fence I mean it's very moving work and you know if you're not moved check your pulse because I don't see how you could not be what I want to end on here though and wrap this up is I was talking about the photo journalistic stuff so to come back around and like I said Gordon had a 20-year career Life magazine and on assignment this was part of a spread that was done and stories were written to go along with these photos of this was a family in Rio de Janeiro living in a slum and exposing some things that maybe people didn't know about to the world and that's what these pictures were from and the human element of this little girl in Rio crying next to the figure in bed who suggestive of either being sick or dead even and these are very difficult images I think still today this is a what you're looking at here's a spread from the actual Life magazine and I this is really mind-blowing the sense if you look at the image on the left and the image on the right and I may get this slightly wrong and I apologize in advance but the one on the left I believe is a figure that was being prepared for burial but you have the cross element that's that's brought in there obviously the Christian religious significance of it and on the right hand side is this boy who is sick and you see that same kind of symbolism almost taken in this image whether or not that was intended by by Gordon that was what was in the spread the story goes is that that this boy who was sick and on the right is very ill and is basically parents are gone and he's in a position of raising his own family in this slum and I mean really one of the worst kinds of human condition you can think of as a family finding for itself like that and one of the things that's always troubled me and I you know about this kind of photography whether it be war photography or you know you hit the National Geographic Geographic photographers talk about this a lot but it's the sense that you're there as a photographer you're there to observe and you're not there to intervene and one of my favorite images that I'm looking at today is this and Gordon didn't take this this is Gordon and he's got his Rolleiflex slung over his back and he's helping bring one of the children and his family up to be washed and this shows that here's a guy with a heart the size of nothing else which is kind of you know it really I think brings a lot of Gordon together like I said I never knew Gordon never got to meet him I'm sure he had a kind hearted nature in a soul that was generous and I just loved this image of him actually pitching in and helping one it it enhances the darkness of the situation but two it shows that you know here's a guy working for a major United States magazine at the time when that's really taking off who has a heart and soul to him anyway look through here you know we could go through all day I mean I knew ideas stuck on this because there's so many images the famous Canadian pianist Glenn Gould and the the sense of drama and everything Glenn Gould that's you know brought out in these images but go look through these yourself there's there's more here that we didn't even get to today and what kind of say that is the work of Gordon Parks I'm sorry this episode I mean he deserves a whole documentary and there is one if you go check out half past autumn highly recommended okay so we've been checking out the work of Gordon Parks and I hope you guys have come away with this with I mean there's so much you could come away with on this I mean just but I think the most important thing is that inspiration of what is possible I think it's also the sensibility of I think largely in like I said I never knew Gordon obviously but the the intensity of what kind of a person he was which really I believe comes out in the work it comes out in the storytelling it comes out in just this prolific over of work that he's sharing with the world that exists now and like I said I mean it's really hard I mean you know photography is something that's so important to me and I'm sure it is to you too and it's really hard when somebody says who's your favorite photographer I'm sure I have guys that are my favorites but it you know you can't put Gordon into that because he'll be your favorite photographer but I mean he blows so much out of the water in terms of what he was able to accomplish during his life in his career and like I said it wasn't just as a photographer I mean he was a guy who was an accomplished pianist in both jazz and classical music was a composer wrote poetry did paintings wrote books you know he was it was a film director I mean there were 10 films that he did to various degree degrees of success shaft being the most well known of that that lot but anyway I hope this is been inspirational to you on some level and like it certainly is to me and remember we got some new stuff coming up with the show so stay tuned bye next week I will announce but we are going to bring the photography show back and we are going to do a live ask me anything that will we'll do once a month and I'm not real sure when that's going to start but I'll have all the details worked out so it'll be real simple and real clear with you guys so if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment tweet me email me whatever you got to do and I'd be happy to address it anyway once again guys that's been the art of photography and thanks for watching I'll see you next time later\n"