Gordon Parks

Gordon Parks was an American photographer, writer, and filmmaker who became the first African American staff photographer at Life magazine, where his photo essays documented poverty, segregation, and the civil rights movement with an approach that combined documentary rigor with strong personal empathy for his subjects. His photograph American Gothic, Washington, D.C., depicting a Black government cleaning woman posed before an American flag, became one of the defining images of his early career's engagement with racial injustice, and his later photo essays followed subjects including Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party. Parks was also the first major Black director in Hollywood, directing the 1971 film Shaft, and his career across photography, film, music composition, and writing made him one of the most versatile American artists of the twentieth century.