Grace Schaub: What did working for Roy Stryker and the FSA do for your photographic career?
Gordon Parks: Going to the FSA was the turning point in my career. I learned how to use the camera as a weapon against discrimination, poverty, and all the things one likes or dislikes about the universe.
GS: What was Stryker's influence on the photographers who worked with him?
GP: Stryker wasn't a photographer himself, as you know, but we would talk about how to point a camera, where to point it, and how to speak with it.
GS: The FSA, then, was a good training ground for you?
GP: I think working with Roy Stryker, and the photographers I was fortunate enough to work with, formed my opinions about how to shoot a picture--the structure of it, and so on. All of us were inclined to shoot a picture full frame--the way we saw it, and that's the way we wanted to see it published. After working a few years with the FSA, it became natural for me to shoot and see this way. Years later, when I worked at LIFE magazine, the editors very seldom cropped my pictures, even when it came to my fashion work. The picture editors were respectful of certain photographers and the way they shot, like Eugene Smith, who shot with the entire scene in mind--just like a painter approaches his or her painting. You wouldn't crop a Picasso or a Degas. The editors had that kind of respect for you. Even today, I look at something and I frame it immediately. Its always a balance, its automatic, not a search. You look and there it is, the composition comes immediately.
GS: Do you think an FSA or a "Stryker" force would be relevant today?
GP: We certainly need it. Stryker always taught us to think before we shot--and not to just use up a lot of film. He would prefer you came back with ten pictures as long as they were good, rather than one hundred that were so-so. He didn't like you to use a wide angle lens unless the picture called for one. Today, photographers use a wide angle lens for every shot just because it's a good focal length, and they don't have to worry about depth of field. We were more discriminating in our choice of lenses. We would use the lens that suited the purpose and the subject matter.
GS: What camera format are you most comfortable using?
GP: I've used a 2 1/4 for awhile and its fine for fashion, faces, and details, but Ive learned to love the 35mm format. I had a Contax, a Rolliflex, and at one time a Speed Graphic, but when I got to LIFE magazine, I prefered to use a 35mm camera. They wanted the photographers to use the larger formats back then, but we crammed it down their throats because it was so much more flexible to go with the smaller format. Working with the 35mm camera was good training for my future involvement with film directing. The first film I shot,The Learning Tree, was in Panavision, which is practically the same format, so it served me well.
GS: When you were working for the FSA you were shooting in black and white? At LIFE was it mostly black and white or color?
GP: Most of the stories were in black and white. Eventually we got into color. Fashion stories were invariably shot in color to show the fabrics. Certain stories just didn't come off in color. I did a story on discrimination in the south, and shot it all in color. When I saw the results, I felt it just didn't work as well as black and white would have. I was assigned to shoot another story on discrimination, this time in the north, and told my editors I wanted to shoot in black and white. I did, and it was much more effective than the color piece.
GS: Why was that?
GP: There is something about color--the gradations of the tones, that can make a dirty street or even a rag look beautiful. You might be shooting the most catastrophic scene in the world--for example poverty or the war zone. Color takes away from the harshness that is needed to show poverty-stricken areas. I know if I had shot Flavio in color it would have been a disaster. Certain things are a natural to shoot in black and white.
GS: Would the editors generally give you the option?
GP: Yes, the editors at LIFE pretty much left it to the discretion of the photographer. They seldom pressed you to shoot in color unless you really felt you needed it. They may have asked you to carry a couple of rolls of color film also, and if something was beautiful, and you weren't trying to say more than that, you went with color.
GS: What was it like working at LIFE magazine during what is considered the "golden era" of photography?
GP: That was the golden era. We had all the big format magazines like LIFE, LOOK, THE SATURDAY EVENING POST, where photographers could really spread out their work. The beauty of working for LIFE in those days was that they didn't give you any time limit. You could stay on assignment until you got the coverage you needed, rather than rush back, because of lack of funds or time.
GS: No deadlines?
GP: Generally, there weren't any tight deadlines. Unless, of course, you were covering a topical story and it was needed that week to close out the magazine. In which case, you hustled and got it off as quickly as possible.
If you were in Paris or London, you got your film developed at the labs and they sent it back to the states for you directly. In many cases, the photographer didn't get to see his pictures until he returned to the U.S. And that could be two years down the road.
I remember once shooting a story for LIFE on American Poets, I worked on it for one year. There are certain things you have to wait for, you can't force them. If you don't wait your pictures will show you forced it. I came in and handed the editors twelve 35mm transparencies for the story. That's what I wanted. I shot the poets I wanted and selected the pictures, they accepted it, and ran it. For that story, I spent a year meeting and photographing poets, reading poetry, and interpreting it the way I wanted for the story.
In a similar vein, for the magazine SHOW, I went to Brazil to try and capture the feeling of the music of Villa-Lobos. I also wrote poetry along with the pictures I shot. It was a very difficult thing to do, but it made me think.
GS: How did you develop this approach to covering a story?
GP: I learned it from Stryker. Although, I didn't write poetry for him while at the FSA, I learned to take the time to think about my work from him. And that's what I feel is needed today. Photographers should learn to think before they shoot--not just send a barrage of shots off with a high-powered, motorized camera. You would be surprised at the number of photographs brought to the lab at Life magazine by just one photographer covering a football game. Sometimes two hundred rolls of film are shot for just one assignment, and only three or four pictures are used.
GS: That's a lot of film.
GP: Its an absolute waste of film. The photographer puts his or her camera up there and shoots in a motorized situation, and knows something will come out of it. Well, I don't like to shoot that way. I don't like equipment that tells me what to do, I like to be able to tell the equipment what to do. So, I don't buy all the fancy new gadgets and cameras. I still have my old cameras.
GS: Many photographers on assignment today have deadlines, limited time, and budgets, and the work is rushed in.
GP: Stryker would send you off on a story to cover New England. If you asked him, "Where do I go." His answer would be, "Go where you want to go, to New England." Well, then,"When should I come back?" Stryker would say " Don't worry about it--go shoot and come back when you feel as though you've got the story covered. Just keep in touch with the home office." Stryker was the same way at Standard Oil when I worked for him there. He sent us out to cover America. Well, he knew you couldn't cover it in a week or two; for something like that you would be gone for about six months.
GS: Sounds like a great way to work.
GP: When you are given that kind of flexibility, you learn a lot more, and you're not just shooting a lot of stuff that isn't necessary. But, I know there are many photographers who have only a week in which to complete their assignment, so they shoot as much as possible.
GS: How has photography affected your life?
GP: Photography has made it possible for me to do many things. I didn't take to writing until I was assigned to the Paris bureau for LIFE magazine. It was there I met Camus and Richard Wright. I got to know so many people in Paris who inspired me. I wanted to say something with the typewriter. I also started composing music in Paris. It had always been my ambition to be a concert pianist.
GS: In what year were you assigned to the Paris bureau?
GP: 1950.
GS: What was it like for you over there?
GP: I was not so caught up being a black man in a foreign country. Here, in America, it was an ongoing fight against discrimination--before the sixties it was a constant battle. Your thoughts centered on one thing--survival.
When I got to Paris my mind was free and I began to pursue other things. I was able to take time to compose, write, and do all those things I wanted to do. I also had time between assignments. At LIFE, it could be two months before another assignment came through, and I wouldn't waste that time. I either wrote poetry, composed music, or wrote books.
GS: Were there any opportunities denied you in photography?
GP: I haven't been denied much in photography. I pretty much had my own way at the FSA. I wasn't shuttled off to do certain things because I was black. At LIFE magazine, I covered royalty, fashion, crime, poverty, discrimination--I did everything. LIFE was very good about that.
GS: The nineteen sixties was a decade of political and racial unrest, and you covered many of LIFE's most historically important stories. Would you talk about your relationship with the magazine during that time?
GP: The difficult thing about the sixties was that when reporting on the Black Muslims, the Black Panthers, and black leaders like Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver, and others, I had to walk a very tight rope. I let all the people I covered know that they shouldn't tell me or do anything they didn't want me to report, because I'm here to report--and they understood that. I went to talk to Eldridge Cleaver when he was in exile in Algiers. He understood my position, in fact, he offered me the post of Minister of Information of the Black Panthers. I wasn't out there as a black reporter, but as a reporter, and I had to prove to LIFE magazine that I could do it, and they had faith in me. I've called myself an objective reporter with a subjective heart. I had to look and size things up for myself without overloading them. Once I did that, LIFE had confidence in me doing anything. But I'm sure, at first they thought they couldn't send Gordon out to do the Black Muslim story because he's going to overload it, because he's black also. But I proved differently, and that I was as fair as I could possibly be in the situation.
Those were rough times. I had to write my own stories. I couldn't trust anyone else to write them because one word could twist the meaning--just one word, so I had to check all the stories before they were put out on the line. I had to be sure everything was correct--It could have been very dangerous for me also.
GS: Did you welcome the opportunities to do those stories?
GP: Yes. For instance, when Martin Luther King was assassinated, LIFE called me up. I was out in Hollywood working on a film at the time. They said, "Gordon, this is for you, can you write the piece?" I said, "Sure, I'll be on the next plane to Atlanta for the funeral," and I was. For stories like that, they would say, "Nobody can do it like you," and I wanted to do those stories. It was the same thing with the Black Muslims, the Panthers, Malcolm X, and Stokely Carmichael. The magazine knew I could get closer than a white photographer could. And, I wanted to do those stories very much because they were roaring times in the sixties and I wanted to be there with my camera. So, I was never limited one way or another. I never suffered particularly by being a black photographer.
