Gordon Parks American Gothic (1942)

Gordon Parks American Gothic (1942) The mid-twentieth century saw African-American life undergo tumultuous change. Slaves as they entered the previous century, black Americans were increasingly struggling to achieve pride, identity and a stake in an American that was desperately unequal in its laws and its economy. Photography, film director, musician and artist Gordon Parks would devote his life to documenting this experience through whatever media were at his fingertips.

Thus, he would make his presence known to the public, to the art world and to black culture during the 1940s and 1950s, finding himself in the ideal position to bring greater attention to the burgeoning civil rights movement. Indeed, as he documented this movement while it rippled through the South, he himself became a participant. Through his affiliation with such prominent mainstream, white readership-based publications as Vogue and Life, Parks would become a noted social critic.

The striking images that permeated his work would bring an understanding to the average American home of the absolute desperation and despair that still faced many black families during this time. His greatest opportunity to bring this issue into the homes of Americans was through the fellowship received to work as a photographer for the United States Farm Security Administration (FSA). Here, he began a series of photos chronicling the inherency of hardship for African-Americans attempting to survive in the United States.

This would lead to what is perhaps Parks' most famous photo. With American Gothic. Washington, D.C., Parks produced what is widely considered the most powerful image in his catalogue. Here, he produced a portrait of a cleaning lady who worked at the FSA named Ella Watson. The 1942 picture would be stunning perhaps most particularly because it would place a black woman in front of the American flag.

To the highly polarized racial perspective at the time, this could have been perceived as an extremely inflammatory statement simply for pairing the beloved image of old glory with a stern and exhausted looking black woman. Moreover, Parks has made a vocal statement by depicting Ella Watson brandishing a mop in one hand and a broom in the other. The statement being made is essentially that the American experience for the African-American is largely one of servitude and humbling subjugation.

Even nearly a century removed from the abolition of slavery, this image would go a great distance to suggest that in many cultural contexts, not this least of which was our nation's capital, the plight of African-Americans was still extremely dire. There is also an emotional tenor to the work which suggests a great sympathy for the subject.

As an African-American man who had attained an uncommon degree of respect and success for the time and place, Parks would be in the unique position to recognize Watson as an evocative subject for his work. Accordingly, a retelling of their interaction by Brookman (2004) is eye-opening. Here, Brookman remarks that in their first meeting, Watson essentially told Parks her life story. Brookman reports that "in August 1942 Parks listened as Watson told her story.

'She had struggled alone after her mother had died and her father had been killed by a lynch mob,' he recalls. 'She had gone through high school, married and become pregnant. Her husband was accidentally shot to death two days before the daughter was born. By the time the daughter was eighteen she had given birth to two illegitimate children, dying two weeks after the second child's birth. What's more, the first child had been stricken with paralysis a year before its mother died.

Now this woman was bringing up these grandchildren on a salary hardly suitable for one person.' (p. 1) As Parks listened to her tell this story, he recognized the imperative to find a way to reiterate this story to many others through a set of images. Therefore, Watson would become a muse for Parks as he ventured to identify the visual core of African-American suffering.

The experience for the African-American woman in particular, as a mother and grandmother struggling against the twin prejudices of racism and sexism, are captured in the FSA series. But there is another level of importance and emotiveness.