Arty Farty Friday ~ Gordon Parks, Photographer, Renaissance Man.

[Gordon] "Parks was a man of many pursuits — photographer, novelist, poet, memoirist, filmmaker, composer. But he is most remembered as a photographer. And while some of his images live on because they delight the eye with their beauty, others endure because of the way that they touched the hearts and minds of millions of LIFE’s readers and changed, if only just a little, the course of American history."



Above paragraph comes from
How Gordon Parks' Photographs Implored White America to See Black Humanity
~ John Edwin Mason, 2016.


Gordon Parks was born in Fort Scott, Kansas, son of Sarah and Jackson Parks, a tenant farmer, on Nov. 30, 1912 in Fort Scott, Kansas. He was the youngest of fifteen children. He attended a segregated elementary school. The town was too small to afford a separate high school that would facilitate segregation of the secondary school, but blacks were not allowed to play sports or attend school social activities, and they were discouraged from developing any aspirations for higher education. Parks related in a documentary on his life that his teacher told him that his desire to go to college would be a waste of money.

When Parks was eleven years old, three white boys threw him into the Marmaton River, knowing he couldn't swim. He had the presence of mind to duck underwater so they wouldn't see him make it to land. His mother died when he was fourteen. He spent his last night at the family home sleeping beside his mother's coffin, seeking not only solace, but a way to face his own fear of death. Soon after, he was sent to St. Paul, Minnesota, to live with a sister and her husband. He and his uncle argued frequently and Parks was finally turned out onto the street to fend for himself at age 15. Struggling to survive, he worked in brothels, and as a singer, piano player, bus boy, traveling waiter, and semi-pro basketball player. In 1929, he briefly worked in a gentlemen's club, the Minnesota Club. There he not only observed the trappings of success, but was able to read many books from the club library. When the Wall Street Crash of 1929 brought an end to the club, he jumped a train to Chicago, where he managed to land a job in a flophouse.

Parks purchased his first camera at the age of 25 after viewing photographs of migrant workers in a magazine. His early fashion photographs caught the attention of Marva Louis, wife of the boxing champion Joe Louis, who encouraged Parks to move to a larger city. Parks and his wife, Sally, relocated to Chicago in 1940. He began to explore subjects beyond portraits and fashion photographs in Chicago. He became interested in the low-income black neighborhoods of Chicago's South Side. In 1941, Parks won a photography fellowship with the Farm Security Administration for his images of the inner city. He created some of his most enduring photographs during this fellowship, including "American Gothic, Washington, D.C.," picturing a member of the FSA cleaning crew in front of an American flag.

After the FSA disbanded, Parks continued to take photographs for the Office of War Information and the Standard Oil Photography Project. He also became a freelance photographer for Vogue. Parks worked for Vogue for a number of years, developing a distinctive style that emphasized the look of models and garments in motion, rather than in static poses.

In 1948 Parks became a staff photographer for Life magazine, the first African American to hold that position. He remained with the magazine until 1972, became known for his portrayals of ghetto life, black nationalists, and the civil rights movement. A photo-essay about a child from a Brazilian slum was expanded into a television documentary (1962) and a book with poetry (1978), both titled Flavio. Parks also was noted for his intimate portraits of such public figures as Ingrid Bergman, Barbra Streisand, Gloria Vanderbilt, and Muhammad Ali.

I'm wary of getting into hot water via copyright rules, so have not included a string of Gordon Parks' photographs - there are several in large format at this link:
Photos of Harlem in 1943 by the iconic photographer Gordon Parks …

Also, do go to Google Image for numerous examples of the work of Gordon Parks.

I hope I'll be allowed to include just one - I particularly like this, titled
"No Known Restrictions: Anacostia Boys". (1942) (Anacostia, Washington D.C. - a Frederick Douglass housing project).

Parks’s works of fiction include The Learning Tree (1963), a coming-of-age novel about a black adolescent in Kansas in the 1920s. He also wrote forthright autobiographies—A Choice of Weapons (1966), To Smile in Autumn (1979), and Voices in the Mirror (1990). He combined poetry and photography in A Poet and His Camera (1968), Whispers of Intimate Things (1971), In Love (1971), Moments Without Proper Names (1975), and Glimpses Toward Infinity (1996). Other works included Born Black (1971), a collection of essays, the novel Shannon (1981), and Arias in Silence (1994).

In 1968 Parks became the first African American to direct a major motion picture with his film adaptation of The Learning Tree. He also produced the movie and wrote the screenplay and musical score. He next directed Shaft (1971), which centred on a black detective. A major success, it helped give rise to the genre of African American action films known as blaxploitation. A sequel, Shaft’s Big Score, appeared in 1972. Parks later directed the comedy The Super Cops (1974) and the drama Leadbelly (1976) as well as several television films.

Gordon Parks died March 7, 2006, in New York.

Sources
https://www.biography.com/people/gordon-parks-37379
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Parks
http://www.gordonparksfoundation.org/artist/biography
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gordon-Parks

ASTROLOGY

I cannot possibly leave Mr Parks without taking a very brief look at his natal chart! It has to be a 12 noon version as no time of birth is known.

Born 30 November 1912 in Fort Scott, Kansas.

A very strong showing of Sagittarius! Sun, Mars, Mercury and Jupiter all in the sign of The Archer, representing, among other characteristics a philosophical, open-minded, just, optimistic, and generous nature. Likely to be scholarly, inspirational, enthusiastic and expansive. That's just for starters! We cannot be certain of Moon's position without a time of birth. At noon Moon was in the last degrees of Leo, so if he were born later in the day, Moon would have been in early Virgo. I do like Leo Moon for him though. We also can't know Park's rising sign without time of birth. Even without that knowledge, there are several notable aspects and patterns in this well-integrated natal chart. I particularly like the aspects between planets at 00 degrees : Uranus @ 00 Aquarius, Mars @ 00 Sagittarius, Saturn @ 00 Gemini - there's a helpful sextile, a harmonious trine, and a balancing opposition involved there; planets and signs reflecting social concern, dynamism, and a solid work ethic. Planets' placements are forming several astrological patterns too - a Mystic Rectangle, a Yod, a T-square - among others, too many to interpret in this brief rundown.

Arty Farty Friday ~ Films & Photographers

Watching Kodachrome on Netflix earlier this week had me remembering other movies where a photographer, real, fictional or a blend of both played a leading part.

In Kodachrome, a record company executive (played by Jason Sudekis of Saturday Night Live fame) joins his estranged dad (played by Ed Harris), a famous photographer who is dying, on a road trip to Kansas to find the last lab still developing Kodachrome film. The movie pays little attention to the father's actual photographs until the last few minutes of the story. The story centres on a much used theme - a father neglecting family life, concentrating instead on his talents and profession earning, instead of love, bitterness and hostility from his offspring later in life.

Another movie that comes to mind where a photographer plays a leading role is one of my all time favourites: The Bridges of Madison County. It's love story about a photographer on assignment, from National Geographic, to shoot the historic bridges of Madison County, Iowa. He meets a housewife, whose husband and children are away on a trip to the State Fair. Say no more! Oh my - I get a lump in my throat even thinking about some of the movie's last scenes! I've read the novel of the same name by Robert James Waller too, as well as several of his other novels. He's an excellent story teller - there's little wonder that the movie is so memorable. We also took a trip to the covered bridges of Iowa some years ago - my blog post is here.

Fur is more of a faux documentary film, about the imagined career of real-life photographer, Diane Arbus . We saw the film, but no special memories of it come to mind, though I think I had some reservations about it and didn't write a blog post after having seen it. I had written about Ms Arbus herself earlier though - LINK

The only other movie I recall seeing, involving photography as a main theme, rather than a photographer, has a sci-fi or time-warp theme : Time Lapse. Three friends discover a mysterious machine that takes pictures twenty-four hours into the future, and conspire to use it for personal gain, until disturbing and dangerous images begin to develop.

There are several lists online naming a few dozen other movies, fictional, bio-pic or straight documentary style, featuring photographers. Linking here to a straight-forward text-only list.

Arty Farty Friday ~ Paving the Way for Female Artists in Photography & Sculpture

Frances Benjamin Johnston and Barbara Hepworth, these two women, both born in the first half of January, 39 years and the wide Atlantic apart, became two of the first women to be successful in their chosen fields of art: photography and sculpture respectively.

Frances "Fannie" Benjamin Johnston
(15 January 1864 – 16 May 1952) was an early American female photographer and photojournalist whose career lasted for almost half a century. She is most known for her portraits, images of southern architecture, and various photographic series featuring African Americans and Native Americans at the turn of the 20th century.

Rather than posting too small images of some of F.B. Johnstone's photographs here, I'll leave a link to Monovisions a website with a thread of large format images of her photographs - do go take a look:
Vintage: Everyday Life in the U.S by Frances Benjamin Johnston (1900s-1910s)

Dame Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth DBE
(10 January 1903 – 20 May 1975) was an English artist and sculptor. Her work exemplifies Modernism and in particular modern sculpture. She was one of the few female artists of her generation to achieve international prominence.

Barbara Hepworth was born in Yorkshire on 10 January, 1903. She lived in Cornwall from 1939.
Hepworth emerged in the late 1920s as a leading member of a new generation of sculptors. Her work became increasingly abstract in the 1930s and, after moving to Cornwall, she began to make sculpture in terms of her experience of landscape. She continued to carve throughout her life, but from 1956 she also made works in bronze which allowed her to produce more and which were better suited to international travel.(See HERE)

This video (around 3 minutes long) offers a brief overview showing some of Barbara Hepworth's sculptures.





ASTROLOGY

Both charts are set for 12 noon, time of birth isn't known in either case. Moon positions and ascendants will not be accurate, as shown.

I wondered if there would be similarities in the charts of these two pioneering women, other than their shared Capricorn Sun sign. They did not share a Moon sign. Ms Johnston's natal Moon would have almost certainly been in Aries, whatever her time of birth - Aries is the classic sign of a pioneer, as it happens! If she were born quite a bit earlier than noon, Moon would have been close to Neptune, and Neptune relates to photography (among other things). Also in Ms Johnston's chart Sun is in helpful sextile to Jupiter and both planets link via 150 degree aspects to Uranus, planet of all that is modern or unexpected. I like that formation for her - it's known as a "Yod" or Finger of Fate. The Yod links the signs of Capricorn (practicality, business) and Scorpio (passion, determination), directing these to Uranus in Gemini - the classic communications sign; this lady's photo-journalism was pure communication, and the fact that it was by a female photographer in that era was unexpected. Bingo!

Frances Benjamin Johnston, born on 15 January 1864 in Grafton, West Virginia, USA.

There is no obvious similarity between the charts. I'm not surprised to see that Barbara Hepworth's chart had extra emphasis on Capricorn, including the sign's ruler, Saturn. To my mind sculpture - the manipulation of solid matter into art - naturally links to Saturn (solidity, rigidity) and Capricorn the Cardinal Earth sign of the zodiac.

Mercury and Jupiter are in Uranus-ruled Aquarius, adding an unexpected, modernistic tone.
Uranus in Sagittarius sextiles Jupiter in Aquarius - so here's a loose similarity to Frances B. Johnston's chart - the Uranus/Jupiter link.

Moon in Barbara Hepworth's chart, was at 5 Gemini at noon, if she were born in the very early hours, Moon might have been in the last degrees of Taurus - that would put it in harmonious trine to Venus, planet of the arts in Capricorn and would be very apt - but it's speculation only!


Dame Barbara Hepworth, born on 10 January 1903 in Wakefield, Yorkshire, England, UK.

Arty Farty Friday ~ William Eugene Smith

William Eugene Smith, born on 30 December 1918 in Wichita, Kansas, was a photo-journalist, famous in his time, and some say in his methods and output, born way "before his time".
Snips from pbs.org, HERE

The war in the South Pacific, a country doctor in Colorado, victims of industrial pollution in a Japanese village — all of these were captured in unforgettable photographs by the legendary W. Eugene Smith. No matter where, what, or whom he was shooting, Smith drove himself relentlessly to create evocative portraits that revealed the essence of his subjects in a way that touched the emotions and conscience of viewers. The works of this brilliant and complicated man remain a plea for the causes of social justice and a testament to the art of photography. Smith learned about photography from his mother, Nettie. By the age of thirteen he was committed to the craft, and by twenty-one he had been published in dozens of magazines. A breakthrough for Smith came during World War II, when he received an assignment to cover the war in the Pacific. In the spirit that characterized his lifelong approach toward his work, Smith threw himself into the action. He photographed on land, in the sea, and in the air, hoping to get to the center of the experience of war, and, in his words, “sink into the heart of the picture.”

After the war Smith became one of the leading lights in LIFE magazine, with a variety of projects such as

“Nurse Midwife,” the story of Maude Callen, a black woman working in an impoverished community in the rural South, Smith wanted his essay to “make a very strong point about racism, by simply showing a remarkable woman doing a remarkable job in an impossible situation.”

Smith relied heavily on alcohol and amphetamines to keep up with the demands he made on himself. He was a perfectionist's perfectionist in his approach to photography. The volume of his work is astounding: tens of thousands of photographs on each project, with months, even years of research to reach a proper understanding of each subject.

 The kind of photo-essay for which Smith became  famous

From an article in The Guardian:

...Even at this early age, Smith was an unpredictable and self-sabotaging individual. At Newsweek, he was fired for repeatedly using a small-format camera that the magazine’s photo department prohibited. He quit Life a decade later after a row about how they had presented one of his images of the Nobel prize-winning physician and humanitarian campaigner Albert Schweitzer.

Controversy dogged him even after his death: what many consider his most powerful photograph, Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath (1971), a starkly intimate portrait of Ryoko Uemara bathing her naked daughter, Tomoko, who has severe deformities from the effects of mercury poisoning, was withdrawn from further publication in 1997 at the wishes of Tomoko’s family.

Throughout his career, Smith railed against authority, often alienating the very editors whose imposed boundaries he needed when his obsessive quest for perfectionism became self-defeating. “Whatever demons that drive him were certainly not appeased by the alcohol and amphetamines,” says Stephenson. “One of the themes that I hope is apparent in the book is the sense that he needed care and attention in order to get his work done. Mostly he didn’t have it in his life, because he was so hard to work with. It is one of the great ironies of his life that he alienated the people – editors, assistants – who would have helped him the most.”

In the later years of his life (he died aged 59) Smith lived in a loft in New York City, where artists, jazz musicians and other luminaries of the time would gather. There is a huge collection of photographs from that era, as well as another huge collection of audio tapes.

More startling still are the 1,740 reels of audio tape, which were made by Smith between 1957 and 1965 in his previous loft apartment in 6th Avenue near West 28th Street. They contain around 4,500 hours of mostly ambient recordings often caught clandestinely on microphones he draped on dangling leads throughout the loft and in its stairways. These tapes reveal Smith’s seeming desire to document everything going on around him – and not just through photographs.