[Vincent Brown] Taken during the Second World War, this photograph is now known as "American Gothic," referencing the famous painting of the same name.
But it started out under a different title: "Washington, D.C. Government charwoman."
It's by one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century: Gordon Parks.
Over the course of a remarkable career, Parks excelled as a writer, musician, and filmmaker, directing movies that included the blaxploitation classic, "Shaft."
But he also spent six decades documenting the lives of Black Americans, with this, his most iconic image, being one of his earliest.
How the photograph was made, how it was received, and why it changed its name is an intriguing story that still shapes how we think about the role of photography today.
[mellow music] In 1942, Washington, D.C., was bustling with life, as workers flooded into the city to support the war effort.
Behind this common cause, though, D.C. was deeply divided, with many African Americans living in poverty.
This was the segregated city that Gordon Parks found when he arrived that January, fresh from Chicago, where his photography had focused on fashion.
In D.C., he had a rare opportunity to work at the FSA, the Farm Security Administration, whose prestigious documentary unit had nurtured the talent of white photographers like Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans.
- This is the Department of Agriculture, and the Farm Security Administration offices were, according to Parks, in this building behind us.
- What brought him here?
- Gordon Parks understood very early in his career that Black people were not represented by their own vision.
And he thought that if he could gain the tools of photography, that he would be able to represent his own community for the world.
- [Vincent] At the FSA, Parks was fortunate to have a mentor in Roy Stryker, the legendary head of the documentary unit.
Shortly after Parks's arrival, Stryker introduced him to someone who would change his life: Ella Watson, the woman who cleaned their offices.
- It was really that simple.
Stryker, I think, was in a very strategic way, encouraging Parks to learn how to make pictures that would tell the stories that Gordon wanted to tell.
- Stryker encouraged him to go out and ask her to see her home, - Mm.
- spend time in her neighborhood, go to the church with her.
- He really got to know her, didn't he?
- Yeah, he was following her for more than a month and photographing her daily life.
- [Vincent] Parks discovered that she'd had a tough life.
She'd grown up in the South, where her father had been lynched.
Her husband had been shot, and she was now left raising her grandchildren.
[somber piano music] - This one right here was taken inside her home, - Mm.
a very modest home in Washington, D.C. - She was obviously very focused on her family, from these photos -- or at least that's what Parks noticed.
- Yeah.
And it really communicates a working-class person, not photographed as someone who is a victim or oppressed, but someone who is working incredibly hard to maintain this family.
And yes, you can see it in every shot of her face, there's just a fortitude and a strength.
- That's right.
It's- in all these photographs you can see that there's poverty, but poverty's not the point of the photograph.
- [Adam] Yeah.
- Right?
[Vincent] During their time together, Parks took some 90 photographs of Watson, but it was one image, taken early on, that stood out from the rest.
So what do you think was different about this photograph from other photographs that Gordon Parks had been taking around the same time?
- It's a photograph that was really carefully made, and he- and everything you see in it is- is intended.
- [Vincent] Unlike Parks's documentary photos, this one was carefully and stylistically composed.
- [Philip] The flag behind Ella Watson takes up the top half of the photograph, but it's a little bit out focus.
It's a little bit fuzzy.
And Ella Watson, standing in front of the flag, holding her broom in one hand, the mop kind of leaning behind her... All of this comes together in a way that presents the irony of the patriotism required of the country, and the flag symbolizing American democracy in a country that did not recognize the equal rights of African American government workers.
- [Vincent] The photograph's message becomes even clearer when we compare it to "American Gothic" the painting, which Parks later said was on his mind.
- Parks was a photographer who was spending a great deal of time at the Arts Institute of Chicago.
Grant Wood's "American Gothic" is in that collection.
This is a painting that has become a symbol, an icon of Americana, defined through the lens of whiteness.
- Mm-hm.
- "Can we not expand beyond this?," you know, is effectively the question Parks is asking.
The image that we have here with Ella Watson, creating a counter-narrative, the expansion of the idea of who counts and who belongs in American life.
So here we have the presentation of an individual who is constituting a new portrait of the nation.
- [Vincent] It's a portrait of the nation that made Roy Stryker very nervous.
What were Stryker's reservations about this image?
- Well, his response to Parks was, you know, to paraphrase, you got the idea, but you're gonna get us all fired.
- [laughing] So why was that?
- This is really the question.
It's why, I think, here we are talking about it decades later.
There was a directness embedded in this portraiture that Parks would develop, that made it incontrovertible as evidence of indignity being experienced by this woman whose entire existence was denigrated.
- Mm-hm.
- Congress did not want to fund the Farm Security Administration to be talking about issues of race in the country.
And so, Stryker was well aware that photographs like this were not gonna be published and couldn't be used.
And the photograph was actually never published by the government.
- [Vincent] This meant that it would not be distributed through leading newspapers and magazines, like many other FSA photographs.
Instead, it would end up in a drawer... [somber music] which is where it stayed for several years, until Parks managed to get it published: First, in a newspaper, then, in 1948, in Ebony magazine.
But what really changed things, was when Parks became the first Black staff photographer at LIFE magazine.
- [Philip] That's when he began to show that picture himself, more in the context of his own body of work.
So, it became better known, certainly during the Civil Rights Movement, beginning in the mid-1950s.
And certainly in the 1960s, that photograph was used and published and became a kind of symbol for the fight for equal rights at that time.
And that's when Parks himself titled the photograph, "American Gothic."
It's an iconic image and an image that is kind of seared into people's minds today.
- bell hooks has said, I think it's so true, that the history of Black liberation movements can be understood as much as a struggle over images as they are a struggle for equal rights and- and ultimately justice.
That's important to understand when looking at an image like this and thinking about why, say, Gordon Parks would say that he understood his images to be "weapons."
- [Vincent] With "American Gothic," Parks pioneered a new approach to capturing the Black experience, combining art with activism, and creating a new tool in the fight for racial justice.
He would later say, "I picked up a camera because it was my choice of weapons against what I hated most about the universe: racism, intolerance, poverty."
- [Sarah] There are ways in which images constitute a rights-based assertion of dignity and pride and humanity.
What he's created with this way to present an individual as an emblem is a kind of rhetorical device that other photographers begin to emulate, to alter, to innovate with, and to move society forward through.
And that's enormously powerful.
- What's up brother?
How you been man?
- [Vincent] Today, Parks's approach to image-making continues to inspire photographers -- among them, Brooklyn-based Andre D. Wagner.
- [Andre] Probably one of the first books I read when I moved to New York - was "Voices in the Mirror."
- [Vincent] Oh wow, okay.
- By Gordon Parks.
So, kind of just started diving right in.
What I love to do is just immerse myself into the community, so I can just become part of the fabric of the place.
And so, over time, people start to just get more and more comfortable.
They can start to get used to seeing you.
There's the, "Oh, that's Andre, the camera guy."
[soft piano music] For me, it's about going out into the world and using real life, real people, you know, real interactions to speak at life.
And so, like, here I am, you know, just going to the bodega.
You got this young girl with this crinkled up flag.
And so, as a Black photographer, as a Black man, you look at this American flag and it's like, you know, the American flag means a lot of different things to me -- the American Dream, what that pursuit means to me, you know, my community.
Yeah.
Um...
I made this photograph in Washington Square Park, I think in 2019 or '18.
When I actually saw the image, I- I really thought about the "American Gothic" of Gordon Parks.
And it- it's obvious- it's very different, and I'm no Parks, by any means, but the way that this kid is holding this candy that he's selling, and, I don't know, something about his eyes, like, his deep long look, and just the energy, I think just goes back to what Parks did and what I take from him as far as just using these objects and to make them more than just, like, a broom.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Or make it more than just a Welch's fruit snack, like... - Yeah!
And it's something about what you were saying about bringing out the dignity in people, so that some people might look at, you know, both Ella Watson and this kid and just see their role, just see their job.
And I think both you and Parks are seeing the people.
So Gordon Parks talked about how the camera was his weapon.
- Mm-hm.
- That he was an activist photographer.
Does that speak to you?
And how?
- "The camera as a weapon" is so profound and, like, I'ma go out into the world and I'm making these images and we always think, like, you know, can art help?
Can art make an impact?
Can it have an impact?
And I want my work to- to serve as a document, but it's like, I do want to speak about what's really going on in the world.
You know, I want the work to speak about what's happening - like, right now, in this time.
- Mm-hm, mm-hm.
- [Vincent] 80 years after it was taken, "American Gothic" continues to show us a portrait of our nation that can make us very nervous.
Hopefully, too, it can draw us in, and inspire us to action.
It reminds us that photography is never just a document -- it's a relationship with the people we encounter.
They aren't for us to capture with the camera, but to get to know, and possibly to care and fight for.
That potential for solidarity paints a much "Bigger Picture" than any you could fit in a frame.
[mellow music] [mellow music ending]
Passport
Follow Us