It’s hard to overstate just how big a deal it was when Gordon Parks became the first African-American staff photographer for Life magazine around 1948. There was no bigger venue for a photojournalist to display his handiwork. The story behind Parks’ rise and of his iconic images that are, in and of themselves, part of American history, is told in this excellent new documentary.
What makes this different from the average chronological biography is the fact that director John Maggio goes back and forth in time, following present day African-American photographers who were inspired by Parks. Maggio follows their current projects and gets insightful perspective from 3 photographers with their feet on the ground.
But Parks is the centerpiece and archival interviews with him from various decades is interspersed with current on-camera interviews with Spike Lee, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and even Anderson Cooper, whose famous mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, was once a subject of Parks’ photography and the two became lifelong friends.
Parks was a black man, photographing black people for, at the time, a mostly white audience. He never sold out, never did something he didn’t want to do. In fact, many of his images could be credited with giving readers a better understanding of Jim Crow laws’ effects, sometimes with just a perfectly captured facial expression of anguish.
Parks also brought us many of the photos you can see in your mind’s eye of Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali and MLK. Although Parks died in 2006 in his 90s, there remain great pieces of previous interviews, which allow him to speak in the first person about the relationships that were forged with those well-known subjects.
And here’s something I didn’t know: he was also a musician, a writer and a film director. It was he who directed the 1971 seminal film, Shaft. It was cool to see 79 year-old Richard Roundtree, looking good and smiling broadly, recount what was happening on the set at the birth of so-called Blaxploitation films.
As far as the young photographers in the film. It’s interesting to see how the seeds planted a half century ago are still bearing fruit today among these talented artists.
The film moves at a good pace, nice surprises along the way, and nice to know the stories behind the images.
A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks is currently on HBO and HBO Max
