RECONSIDERING GORDON PARKS: THE ATMOSPHERE OF CRIME

Black liberation has seen many proponents of its cause, and one trailblazer, should be considered again. His name is Gordon Parks; a man who once declared “Racism is still around, but I am not about to let it destroy me”. 

Known for his innovation in using storytelling as activism, Parks challenged racial stereotypes, institutional violence and repression through the medium of photography, perhaps most famous for his reportage.

Born in Fort Scott, Kansas, 1912, his youth was marked by abject poverty, during an era of homegrown terrorism and institutionalised racism. The inconceivable lynchings of African Americans is correctly defined as terrorism because of the very nature of it — a widely supported campaign to exact racial subordination and segregation.

Before photography, his work swept through a variety of toilsome jobs; an itinerant labourer, a railcar porter, a pianist in a brothel, amongst others. Eventually he picked up a camera at a pawnshop and taught himself the practice of photography. 

Rarely sharing his harrowing experiences of growing up with anybody, he instead used art as a way of distilling the black experience in America. He also documented the role of the criminal justice system in Black American life. 

When the 1950s came around, the “rebel without a cause” and rock and roll attitudes of disaffected youth hit American streets and public consciousness. 

Mainstream media latched onto many white readers’ fears of a supposed surge in crime, prompting Life magazine to report what was happening. A six-part series on crime in the U.S. was announced, which would explore police officers, suspects and victims of the American Criminal justice system. 

Its first instalment saw Gordon Parks working with reporter Henry Suydam to create “The Atmosphere of Crime” — an eight-page photo essay exploring police and prison systems in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles. 

The result: a work of candour and vivid realism, celebrated for its boldness and aesthetic sophistication. The pictures are captured in colour, unlike Parks’ previous black and white reportage. 

Parks’ camera presents deceptively simple situations of crime, enabling Life viewers to peer into an ethically complex hidden world of police work, violence and incarceration. Its main feeling is one of rich empathy. He rejected the cliched view of delinquency, drug use and corruption, opting for a more realistic view of the social and economical factors that tie into criminal behaviour. This transcended his work beyond biased depictions of criminality which proved so popular at the time. Back then American popular culture was laden with romantic notions behind the American gangster and the sex, drugs and rock and roll allure. 

Along with his rich photographic oeuvre, Gordon Parks was also famous for his writing and film directing. In 1997, he wrote in Half Past Autumn: A Retrospective: “Finally, after a long search to find weapons to fight off the oppression of my adolescence, I found two powerful ones, the camera and the pen”. 

One of Parks’ relatives, Robin Hickman-Winfield, founder of the Gordon Parks Legacy Educational Experience, fondly reflects on his life:

“Uncle Gordon wrote about his childhood in The Learning Tree, which became the movie that made him the first Black director in Hollywood. While he wasn’t on the picket lines, he shared it in his work so we would know our story. Black lives mattered to him”