| Title | : | Gordon Parks: The Atmosphere of Crime, 1957 |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 3958296963 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9783958296961 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 117 |
| Publication | : | Published June 16, 2020 |
When Life magazine asked Gordon Parks to illustrate a recurring series of articles on crime in the United States in 1957, he had already been a staff photographer for nearly a decade, the first African American to hold this position. Parks embarked on a six-week journey that took him and a reporter to the streets of New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Unlike much of his prior work, the images made were in color. The resulting eight-page photo-essay “The Atmosphere of Crime” was noteworthy not only for its bold aesthetic sophistication, but also for how it challenged stereotypes about criminality then pervasive in the mainstream media. They provided a richly hued, cinematic portrayal of a largely hidden that of violence, police work and incarceration, seen with empathy and candor.
Parks rejected clichés of delinquency, drug use and corruption, opting for a more nuanced view that reflected the social and economic factors tied to criminal behavior and afforded a rare window into the working lives of those charged with preventing and prosecuting it. Transcending the romanticism of the gangster film, the suspense of the crime caper and the racially biased depictions of criminality then prevalent in American popular culture, Parks coaxed his camera to record reality so vividly and compellingly that it would allow Life ’s readers to see the complexity of these chronically oversimplified situations. The Atmosphere of Crime, 1957 includes an expansive selection of never-before-published photographs from Parks’ original reportage.
Gordon Parks was born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, Kansas, in 1912. An itinerant laborer, he worked as a brothel pianist and railcar porter, among other jobs, before buying a camera at a pawnshop, training himself and becoming a photographer. He evolved into a modern-day Renaissance man, finding success as a film director, writer and composer. The first African-American director to helm a major motion picture, he helped launch the blaxploitation genre with his film Shaft (1971). Parks died in 2006.
Gordon Parks: The Atmosphere of Crime, 1957 Reviews
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This is a brilliant and possibly the only book that covers crime photography so sensitively. Three brilliant essays stand out- Bryan Stevenson, "The Lens of Gordon Parks: A Different Picture of Crime in America,"Nicole R. Fleetwood, "Policing and the Production of Crime” and Sarah Hermanson Meister, "Framing Crime in Photographs,"These three essays document the racial bias towards criminals, the discrimination against blacks, attempts by magazines like Life to portray Blacks being responsible for crimes and the efforts by photographers like Gordon Park to bring out the dark reality. Sobering read.
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In 1957, Gordon Parks, the first African-American staff photographer at Life magazine (and at that time still the only African-American staff photographer at Life) was sent on assignment to photograph “Crime in the U.S.,” accompanying police officers on their beats and visiting locations such as prisons, hospitals, and morgues in four major U.S. cities (New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles). Over the course of six weeks he took 300 color photographs, although only twelve were eventually published in Life in its September 9, 1957 issue (and several of those were cropped).
In November 2020, New York’s Museum of Modern Art exhibited some of these photographs for the first time and a book, co-published with the Gordon Parks Foundation, was released. This is the book which features 54 unaltered photographs, along with reproduction pages of the original Life story, as well as three contextual essays by Sarah Hermanson Meister (MoMA curator), Nicole R. Fleetwood (author and Rutgers University professor), and Bryan Stevenson (lawyer, social justice advocate, and author of Just Mercy).
Unlike many crime photographs of the time, Gordon Parks chose to take these images in color. The results are incredibly cinematic images, filled with such gorgeous light and shadow that it’s hard to believe they were spontaneously taken and not staged, even as they often capture brutal scenes. As noted by the book’s essay authors, Parks also often chose to give the arrestees and prisoners anonymity - photographing them from behind or in profile - while the police officers are usually on full display. The officers seem casual, and occasionally jovial, as they hang out in a house they are searching, or as they question a handcuffed prisoner.
Bryan Stevenson opens the book by describing a lynching that occurred in 1920 in Mulberry, Kansas, when Gordon Parks was seven years old and living just 25 miles away in Fort Scott. Stevenson then asks, “What do we mean by ‘crime’ in America?” In his assignment for Life, Gordon Parks focused both on a large and complex criminal justice system (from beat patrols cruising for arrests to prisons and morgues) but also on the individuals caught up in this system.
The last plate in the book is an exterior shot of San Quentin State Prison at night. One of the few images with no people, it depicts a sight that many Northern Californians have seen every evening, but without the ability to see the individuals inside. Parks’ photographs give viewers the ability to see the prisoners and the guards, in their despair and boredom respectively, as they make it through another day.
Reviewed by Alice S., Librarian, Art, Music & Recreation Dept. -
Beautifully presented and interesting book. However, it's quite slight - only a small selection of photographs taken for a Life story. The essays are well chosen. It's a nice volume but quite slender and not the best of the photographer's work.
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Parks's photos border evocatively on the abstract; the original Life magazine article for which they were taken contains a deep examination of how to read statistics that I fear is far more advanced than any read on statistics in average newspapers and magazines of today.
