African American Biography & Memoir, Photography - History, Criticism, & Collections, Artists, Architects & Photographers - Biography, African American Biography

Half past autumn

Name: Half past autumn
Author: Philip Brookman
ISBN: 9780821222980

by Philip Brookman

Write a review

Overview

Gordon Parks is a living legend. At age eighty-four, he can look back on accomplishments in many fields, including fiction, poetry, film, and music. But first and foremost, Parks is a photographer - a man whose indelible photojournalism, including two decades at Life magazine, has made him one of this century's most esteemed image makers. Accompanied throughout by Parks's recollections and reflections, the nearly 300 images collected in Half Past Autumn give us the full measure of this photographer's achievements for the first time. In the early 1940s, Parks launched his career with a remarkable array of documentary images for the Historical Section of the Farm Security Administration, including his unforgettable American Gothic photograph of Ella Watson, a black charwoman in Washington, D.C. During the same period, Parks landed fashion assignments at Vogue (Harper's Bazaar had rejected him because they wouldn't hire blacks), which paved the way for his later forays into the world of Parisian haute couture.

You name it and Gordon Parks has done it- photographer, filmmaker, poet, composer and novelist. The youngest of 15 children in Fort Scott, Kansas, would experience racism and homelessness. Through it all, he took pictures, eventually working for the Farm Security Administration, then Vogue, then as a staff photographer for Life. Now the 84 year old Parks can look back at his life with satisfaction, as can those who attend the upcoming traveling exhibition of his works that opens at Washington's Corcoran Gallery. The accompanying book, Half Past Autumn: A Retrospective collects 100 color and 195 duotone illustrations accompanied by Parks commentary on his experiences as a photojournalist.

About the Author, Philip Brookman

Gordon Parks, at age 84, is truly a living legend - one of the early Life photographers, and among the most esteemed photographers of our time. His career also extends well beyond the camera - he is an acclaimed poet, filmmaker and composer, and author of many books, from The Learning Tree (1963) to Voices in the Mirror (1990), Arias in Silence (1994), and Glimpses Toward Infinity (1996).

Reviews

There are no reviews yet. Log in to write one.

Editorials

Library Journal

This lavishly illustrated book of photographs from prolific African American artist Parks accompanies a traveling exhibit organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Though Philip Brookman, the Corcoran's curator of photography, offers an assessment of Parks's artistic contributions, his autobiographyrevised, updated, and shortened for this retrospective volumetells it best. Born in 1912, Parks began photography with a $7.50 camera in 1938 and later talked his way into a job with Roy Stryker at the Farm Security Administration. He went on to photograph a range of subjects, from factory workers and Harlem riots to fashion (for Vogue), Paris (for Life), the Civil Rights movement, and Muhammad Ali; his later color work is at once dreamlike and stark. Unrivaled in the emotional impact of his photographs and the range of projects he undertookhis bibliography/filmography lists 15 books of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and photography, and he has also written and directed several films and composed film scores, ballets, and works for piano and orchestraParks shows no signs of slowing down. The images in this fine book, presented chronologically from 1949, go right up to 1997. Highly recommended for photography, black history, photojournalism, fashion photography, and general collections.Kathleen Collins, Bank of America Archives, San Francisco