Protest Portraits: Black Resistance Stories Through the Lens Main Menu Protest Portraits: Black Resistance Stories Through the Lens Home Page Introduction: The Unbridled Chaos Amongst The Cloudy Skies Vernacular Intellectualism and Visionary Artistry Photo-Essays as Vernacular Transcription Gordon Parks' Vernacular Transcriptions A New Hope: Devin Allen, Reluctant Photo-Activist Devin Allen's Vernacular Transcriptions Conclusion: Outlooks Beyond The Mirrorless Lens

A Choice of Weapons: Gordon Parks, Vernacular Intellectual

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One of the ways vernacular intellectuals in the African American Expressive tradition compose photo essays as sites of vernacular transcription is in the case of Gordon Parks[1] . Gordon Parks was a photographer, composer, author, poet, and film director, who became prominent in U.S. documentary photojournalism in the 1940s through 1970s—particularly in issues of civil rights, poverty, and African Americans—and in glamour photography.

The vernacular intellectuals’ work suggests that they come to this work ‘out of [a] deeply intuitive calling and spiritual need’. For Parks, he says of his vocational inspiration, “I picked up a camera because it was my choice of weapons against what I hated most about the universe: racism, intolerance, poverty. I felt that I could somehow subdue these evils by doing something beautiful that people recognize me by…”. He also says, “…Everyone must face the problems of humanity. My way of facing these issues is through photography. It is important because it can show, without needing words, everything that is wrong and can be improved.”

Parks’ protest photos in 1963 operate as a practice of vernacular transcription by working to provide a national context to the Struggle for Civil Rights movement. After several of his white colleagues were turned away in their quest to gain access to leaders, Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad, Parks was commissioned by Life magazine to cover the Black Muslim movement. Parks ventured to the epicenter of Black life in NYC, Harlem, and was able to capture the liberatory acts and used his composition to bring forth ideas to the American consciousness that would reach a readership that largely ignored the injustices of police brutality and show the audience about their violent insistence on keeping the status quo (racial divide/segregation) unchanged.
 [1] I come to Parks by way of the Gordon Parks documentary on Max, “A Choice of Weapons” which places contemporary photographers, Devin Allen, Latoya Ruby Frazier, and Jamel Shabazz, in the tradition of carrying on Gordon Parks’s work in photography.

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  1. Photo-Essays as Vernacular Transcription Kyr R. Mack

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  1. Gordon Parks' Vernacular Transcriptions

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