Gordon Parks’ most important photographic work came down from the walls of the Saint Louis Art Museum on August 3. The show was entitled Bare Witness. In a fundamental form of witnessing, Parks’ human energy claimed its power by conquering time, place, style and genre. He made things.
Over a living span of 93 years and a professional work cycle of seven decades, he worked at a level of high productivity that was unparalleled in the 20th century, with achievements in still photography, motion pictures, musical composition and performance, and literature. “Beyond category” was a phrase often used to describe Duke Ellington. It could as well be given to Gordon Parks.
“I remember my mother telling me, specifically, that she wouldn’t accept any excuses because I was black and that I failed this or I failed that … that this was denied me because I was black,” Parks said.
“She felt, very rightly, that if a white boy could do it, I could do it better.”
This small talking point from a huge mind was evident everywhere in Bare Witness.
There are three spaces in the small gallery. In the first two are the early years of work in Washington culminating in his classic portrait “American Gothic” and the early Life magazine portraits of gang life in Harlem.
“American Gothic” is Parks’ take on the famous painting of the same name by Grant Wood. Wood’s work depicts an idyllic and placid American agricultural Eden. Parks’ D. C. washerwoman posed in front of an American flag with buckled chin and diverted gaze represents nothing so much as Langston Hughes’ dream deferred.
One of the Life photos shows a young man with raised brick ready to attack a perceived enemy. Parks could not have conceived in his time the irony that this shot would carry some 60 years forward from its frozen inscription. A kid fighting with a brick! In our age of high-powered, almost instantaneous mass murder, a brick as a weapon seems almost quaint.
The third space in the gallery gave the work of this great artist not only meaning but spiritual endurance. Here is female beauty. A glamour shot. Here is an image from Vogue Magazine. A stunning model in red with her left arm upraised as if to signal a knowledgeable, but reserved triumph.
Her conventional mooring is balanced by two figures.
She is at the west end of the gallery. Directly to her east sits the great sculptor Giacometti. He is surrounded by the elongated figures for which he is famous. He’s in Paris. He’s caught turning slowly to face Parks’ camera. Then you see his eyes. They’re black. Black like draft pools. They anchor the lady in red. Suddenly she’s just a pretty woman standing still.
To the left of the woman in red is Muhammad Ali. Male beauty. He’s fabulous in red. In Miami in the sixties he’s at the height of his power. His sweat looks sweet. Directly across from Ali are Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver settled precariously in Algeria. She seems serene. He looks cocky. But a little anxious, as if something is gaining on him.
Running our hands along the north wall we meet another Ali. Not by sport, but by court, he’s been stripped of his crown. His perspiration seems hard and burned by salt. It’s political sweat. His religion, his blackness are no longer badges of honor, but burdens. Across from this Ali are four Black Panthers. Two I immediately recognize: David Hilliard and John Huggins. Hilliard would soon succumb to drug addiction and be hunted and imprisoned. Huggins would be shot dead in Los Angeles, on the campus of U.C.L.A. in a political dispute.
As we continue to move along the north wall we encounter classical composer Leonard Bernstein. He is young and elegant, seated in Carnegie Hall. He’s a shaman. I remember his daughter being quoted about growing up in the Bernstein household. She said that she thought that all adults had parties, drank a little too much, had incredibly interesting friends and stayed up late every night like her parents.
This photograph says all those things until you look south and see the picture opposing it.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s daughter leads the women of the Nation of Islam to a place of dignity, order and strength on Founder’s Day. There is not an ounce of frivolity in her. The center of her American culture is knowledge of self. That’s it.
