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Gordon Parks's Harlem Argument - The New York Times

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GordonParkssHarlemArgument
Nov. 11, 2015
Fresh from assignments at Vogue and Glamour in 1948, Gordon Parks appeared one
morning at Lifes New York headquarters, determined to show his portfolio to Wilson Hicks,
the magazines esteemed picture editor. Mr. Hicks was initially reluctant, but he warmed to
Mr. Parkss work and the story he pitched about the gang warfare then plaguing Harlem.
That meeting resulted in two milestones: The photo essay Mr. Hicks commissioned,
Harlem Gang Leader, would be Lifes first by a black photographer, and the first of many
for the magazine by Mr. Parks. The project is the subject of an exhibition, Gordon Parks:
The Making of an Argument, at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College in
Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
Organized by Russell Lord for the New Orleans Museum of Art, the exhibition tracks the
conception, execution and editing of that photo essay. It examines the published article in
relation to the hundreds of negatives, proof prints, contact sheets and editorial notes from
the archives of the Gordon Parks Foundation. Documenting complex editorial decisions and
practices, it exposes the usually private negotiations between photographer and photo
editors and art directors.
The Making of an Argument is an illuminating exercise in visual and racial literacy,
investigating how words and images communicate multifaceted realities, convey points of
view and biases, and sway or manipulate meaning. As the hundreds of photographs taken
for the story were whittled down to the few published in Life, the editorial selection process,
as Mr. Lord noted in his catalog essay, raised questions about authorship and meaning:
What was the intended argument? And whose argument was it?
To get his story, Mr. Parks gained the trust of the Midtowners gang and its 17-year old
leader, Leonard Jackson, who was known as Red. In the time he spent with Mr. Jackson, Mr.

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Gordon Parks's Harlem Argument - The New York Times

Parks became a welcome companion in all of [his] activities, including diplomatic sessions
with other gangs, fights, quiet moments at home, even a visit to a funeral chapel to examine
the wounds of a deceased member of a friendly gang.
Mr. Parks hoped that the photo essay, by drawing attention to a serious social problem,
might encourage programs to help endangered youth. But the range of images he took for
the article, in contrast to those that made it into the magazine, suggest that his conception of
the project differed considerably from his editors. While Mr. Parks would become an
important and influential staff photographer at Life, Harlem Gang Leader was his pilot
project. Thus, as Mr. Lord wrote, the decisions made in producing the photo-essay were
most likely exclusively those of editors and staff at Life.
If the magazines aim in publishing it was to inform its readers about a pressing social
dilemma and boost sales through dramatic and controversial images it did so by
perpetuating stereotypes. While the photo essay focused on a community beset by racism
and poverty, its view of Harlem was narrow, a foreboding and stifling cityscape shrouded in
mist and shadows.
During the editorial process, photographs were aggressively cropped and manipulated, often
to complement the articles graphic layout. In one photograph, Lifes editors, intent on
creating a dramatic picture of Mr. Jackson and a friend viewing the open coffin of fallen
gang member, cropped out a third teenager and darkened the distracting background.
Lifes editors largely dismissed many photographs that focused on the more affirmative
events and rituals of everyday life. While he recorded the violence and aggression of the
Midtowners, Mr. Lord said, Mr. Parks made just as many pictures of intimate moments of
quiet domesticity and boisterous, carefree Harlem street life.
Photographs of Mr. Jacksons brother reading, for example, were rejected for publication,
and the words Reds young brother/not gangster were bluntly scrawled on their contact
sheet. Images of children frolicking around an open fire hydrant or of Mr. Jackson attending
to domestic chores were similarly excluded.
For Mr. Parks, such images would have portrayed the complexity and subtleties of Mr.
Jacksons story, and of Harlem, a neighborhood typically depicted in the mainstream press
as lurid and dangerous. Rather than one-dimensional characters, the photo essays subjects
were multifaceted human beings, capable of responsibility, love and generosity, but also
driven to violence, an understandable, if self-destructive, response to poverty and racism.
By demonstrating the fullness and complexity of its subjects existence, the photo essay
could have helped the magazines white readers to make connections to their own lives, an

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Gordon Parks's Harlem Argument - The New York Times

empathetic response that Mr. Parks believed was vital to challenging stereotypes and
misconceptions about people they saw as fundamentally different from themselves.
In the end, Mr. Jackson was dismayed by the photo essays portrayal of him as a slick
gangster, living a fundamentally unhappy and lawless life. Damn, Mr. Parks, you made a
criminal out of me, the photographer recalled him saying after the essay was published. I
look like Bogart and Cagney all mixed up together.
In the exhibitions moving coda, photographs by Lyric Cabral depict Mr. Jackson, stooped
and frail, 59 years later. In one image, a great-nephew steadies him as he enters an
emergency room. In another, a barber trims his now-gray hair. Ms. Cabrals poignant
images of Mr. Jackson, who died in 2010, bear little resemblance to the teenager depicted in
Life.
They remind us of the other Red Jackson, wrote Mr. Lord, not the one so prominently
displayed in the pages of Life, but the one who scrubbed the floor, washed the dishes, carried
and entertained neighborhood children at parades, and cracked open the fire hydrant on hot
days. This was the Red Jackson Lifes readers would not have a chance to know. This was the
Red Jackson Gordon Parks knew.
Follow@MauriceBergerand@nytimesphotoonTwitter.YoucanalsofindusonFacebook
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