“All the things I did were done because of the fear of failure.”
— GORDON PARKS
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Gordon Parks (1912-2006) remembered his time in Chicago mostly as a period of hardship. As a young man, he was literally lucky to survive a few months as a janitor in a flophouse; when he returned later as a self-taught photographer, he and his new family lived hand to mouth for about a year as he pursued his art at the South Side community Art Center, ground zero of the cultural flowering of Chicago’s black community in the 1930s and ’40s. But Parks’ work documenting life in the city’s black slums paid off in 1941, landing him a fellowship that launched him on a trajectory to Life magazine as its first black shooter. Through his long career, Parks also wore hats as a filmmaker, author, poet and composer — an appropriate son of Chicago’s Black Renaissance.
* Chicagoan who persuaded Parks to leave Minnesota to pursue his photography here: Marva Louis, wife of boxer Joe Louis.
* What Parks paid for his first camera, a used Voigtlander Brilliant: $12.50.
* Amount sent to Life magazine by readers in 1961 to help a sick boy whose life in a Rio de Janeiro slum was documented by Parks: $30,000.
Sources: Tribune archives, “Voices in the Mirror” by Gordon Parks.
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nwatkins@tribune.com
