Black History Moment Gordon Parks
Director Spike Lee and Gordon Parks at the reception prior to The Gordon Parks Independent Film Awards For African American Filmmakers at the Directors Guild of America Theater in New York City on October 3, 2001. photo by Gabe Palacio/ImageDirect
On the staff of LIFE magazine, Parks was the first African American, and he would later be responsible for some of the most stunning imagery on the Vogue pages. He was also the first Black director of a major film, Shaft, helping in the ’70s to form the era of blaxploitation. In 1999, Parks famously told LIFE: “I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera.”
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