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Robert Frank & Gordon Parks: Depicting Segregation & The Future of
Black America at the Cultural Turning Point of the 1950’s
University of Amsterdam Graduate School of Humanities MA thesis History: American Studies Lars van der Peet
Student number: 10319204 larsvdpeet@hotmail.com Thesis advisor: R. Janssens June 30 2020
2 Content
Title page 1
Content 2
Introduction 3-7
Chapter 1.1: Chapter 1: The Historiographical Discussion 8-12 of Civil Rights Photography
Chapter 1.2: Analytical Methodology & Photograph Selection 13-19
Chapter 2: The Status Quo: Depictions of Everyday 20-30 Segregation in the photography of Robert Frank & Gordon Parks
Chapter 3: Differing Visions, The Future of Black America 31-43 Through the Eyes of Robert Frank & Gordon Parks
Conclusion: Robert Frank’s & Gordon Parks’ 44-46 Visions in Contemporary America
Literature 47-48
3 Introduction
Robert Frank & Gordon Parks are both regarded as some of the most influential and defining photographers of the second half of the last century. As Frank passed away in September 2019, The New York Times heralded him “The most influential living photographer upon his death at age 94. He produced a book, The Americans that changed the rules of documentary photography” (Lubow). Meanwhile Gordon Parks was the first African American
photographer to work at Life magazine and after that also the first African American to direct, write and produce a major Hollywood film.
At first glance they seem to be very different photographers, at least regarding their backgrounds. One was a wealthy, bourgeoise, Swiss born, Jewish photographer that would later travel the United States and document it “through European eyes” (Frank, Guggenheim
Application). Another one was an African-American, born in poverty and subject to
segregation and racism in the South. Although many photographers of the era collaborated or interacted with each other there is scarcely a source that mentions the two meeting, much less collaborating. Robert Frank for example was well acquainted with other influential American photographers such as Edward Steichen, Alexander Lieberman and Walker Evans, who also where backers for his Guggenheim application. Alexander Stuart, who wrote a thesis about the criticisms of Robert Frank’s The Americans, wrote: “Evans convinced Frank to apply for the fellowship and served as a sponsor” (27). Evans also was an inspiration to Gordon Parks’ photography. Wing Young Huie in the foreword of A Choice of Weapons, Gordon Parks’ memoir, writes: “He describes how browsing through magazines with images by Farm Security Administration photographers Russel Lee, Walker Evans, and Dorothea Lange changed his life” (ix). Frank’s and Parks’ careers and photography also overlap in various ways. Both photographers would shoot for Life magazine. Both would move to create cinema later in their careers. Both would, through their photography in the fifties present a scathing critique of America’s social and racial issues. They did this in a decade that at that time was experienced as a decade of economic prosperity and social and cultural unity. Gordon Parks would do this throughout his career with projects like Harlem Gang Leader and most
important to this thesis, his segregation project in 1956 which would become the Life article,
The Restraints: Open and Hidden. During this project he documented segregation and racism
in Alabama. Meanwhile Robert Frank travelled through America after being awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1955. Photographing the United States throughout this year would cumulate in his photography book The Americans.
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In his application for the Guggenheim Fellowship, Robert Frank wrote: “The project that I have in mind, will shape itself as it proceeds, and is essentially elastic”. The prestigious Guggenheim fellowship is a grant awarded to those, as is now also stated on their website, "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." (John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation). Frank seems to have an open nonchalance to the purpose of his project. As he said, “it will shape itself as it proceeds” (Frank, Guggenheim Application). This project would eventually become The
Americans, today widely seen as one of the most influential photography projects of the
1950’s and maybe the last century. Professor of History at California Polytechnic State University, George Cotkin wrote: “Few analysts have captured the sadness, tensions, ironies and possibilities of 1950’s American culture and society with the depth and insight of Robert Frank” (19). The broad intention of Robert Frank to simply document America, without indicating towards a specific goal illustrates a distaste to analyzing the meaning of his own photographical work that I will discuss, later in this thesis. As Frank states in his Guggenheim application, “What I have in mind, then is observation and record what one naturalized
American finds to see in the United States that signifies the kind of civilization born here and spreading elsewhere” (Frank, Guggenheim Application). Robert Frank doesn’t like to verbally define the meaning of his photography. Instead he likes to let the work itself speak volumes. However he is ambitious towards creating work of meaning; “The uses of my project would be sociological, historical and aesthetic” (Frank, Guggenheim Application), and although he in no way indicates it in his application, the Americans would become a scathing critique of various societal problems in America like class, culture and racial relations. This was similar to Gordon Parks, although Parks was much more outspoken regarding the intention of his work from the very beginning.
Gordon Parks, in his own words, gravitated towards photography as a weapon against poverty, racism and discrimination. Gordon Parks is quoted on the cover of his own memoir A
Choice of Weapons: “I chose my camera as a weapon against all the things I dislike about
America—poverty, racism, discrimination” (Parks)
Something else that binds these two photographers together is that they documented these societal ills, such as segregation, racism and poverty during a decade that was otherwise marked by a sense of social and cultural unity and cohesion. It is thus not a coincidence that Robert Frank’s book The Americans received various negative reviews upon its release in 1959. As Cotkin states, the book was marked as ‘un-American’ and depressing (21), as the photographs showed a depressed America full of societal ills. Simultaneously, as Perry notes:
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“The Americans was perceived to be an attack on not only the period’s photographic
standards, but also on its moral values and political beliefs” (2). What she means with this is that after the war, there was an economic boom, the rise of suburban middle-class prosperity and consumer culture. There also was a politics of consensus against the rising threat of the Soviet Union. In other words, America seemed to be doing well and was unified, but Robert Frank showed a sad, alienated America with an undercurrent of class- and racial struggles. How is it then that Frank’s book The Americans is so celebrated today? The societal critique presented by Frank in his photographs was not received well in the fifties, yet became ever more prevalent and celebrated in the sixties and onwards. Before I present the central argument of this thesis, I first want to discuss this cultural turning point between the fifties and sixties.
This thesis is a comparative analysis of Robert Frank’s and Gordon Parks’ photography as representational arguments regarding civil rights and the future of black Americans in America, during the cultural turning point of the 1950s and 1960s. In order to make this comparative analysis, it is important to first further explore this cultural turning point and sketch a broader analysis of the US regarding racial relations, photography and culture during this period. We must thus first understand the ‘zeitgeist’ of this period. Only then can we analyze the photography of Robert Frank and Gordon Parks within their cultural and societal contexts. However, as Todd Gitlin, who is an American sociologist and was a political activist for the new left in the sixties argues regarding understanding the ‘zeitgeist’ of a period: “But the zeitgeist is an elusive wind, and the worst temptation is to oversimplify” (11). He further states that the 50s were multiple, differing for Americans of different race, gender, and professions. (12). Gitlin states: “But one thing we know is that the presumably placid, complacent fifties were succeeded by the unsettling sixties. The fifties were in a sense rewritten by the sixties” (12). This quote illustrates one the one hand my argument that there was a significant cultural turning point between the 1950s and the 1960s, one that I will explore further in the first part of this chapter. It also tells us something about understanding history in itself. The way the past, it’s culture, art, morals are seen is, defined by the culture, art and morals of the present.
The idea that the presumably placid, complacent fifties were succeeded by the
unsettling sixties was written by Todd Gitlin in his book The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of
Rage. However, although this idea is a springboard to develop the central argument of this
thesis, it is important to note the broadness of Gitlin’s analysis of the sixties and where it diverges from the focus of this thesis. The contrast between the cultural upheaval of the
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sixties and the ‘stable, ‘prosperous’ and ‘culturally homogenous’ fifties is visible in various cultural movements, some that mostly fall out of the scope of this thesis. A broad description of the sixties would include the second feminist wave, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam war and its concurrent anti-war protests, and the New Left, the latter Gitlin was deeply
involved in. The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage is an analysis that in many ways draws from the autobiographical experiences of its author, Todd Gitlin. Gitlin was a prominent member of the most important organization that represented the New Left, the SDS or Students for a Democratic Society. To Gitlin, the Students for a Democractic Society
organization represents the very core of the sixties. As he argues: “The New Left became the dynamic center of the decade (4). A natural statement for someone so deeply and personally involved within the New Left but not a completely true statement. In a review of the book, Kusmer notices that: “Despite the title, this book is not a general history of the 1960’s” (598). There is a duality in the title where it points to a complete history of the sixties, however ‘Days of Rage’ is actually a reference to a specific demonstration organized by the
Weatherman faction which was a particularly militant part of the Students for a Democratic Society. Todd Gitlin’s book therefore primarily focuses on this aspect of the disruptive sixties and it is also here where it already diverges with the central subject of this thesis, the civil rights movement and particularly civil rights photography, focusing on the work of Robert Frank & Gordon Parks.
The question then becomes, what is the relevancy of opening this thesis with Todd Gitlin’s book? The answer lies within his first chapter. He begins his book outside of the sixties, in the ‘complacent’, ‘prosperous’ fifties where he explores the ‘seeds’ of the sixties. Beneath the dominant cultural notion of the fifties as a period of post-war economic booming, suburban consumer lifestyle and the culturally homogenous values of the nuclear family, one could find an undercurrent of class struggles and racial discrimination. As I discussed within the first paragraph of this introduction, Gitlin argues that the fifties were multiple, differing for Americans of different races, genders, and professions. (12). This notion, of the
underlying tensions that were already noticeable in the fifties as a catalyst for the sixties, is an incredible idea to incorporate in an exploration of photography in the fifties. Photography focused on black Americans and race relations during the decade. This thesis will primarily focus on photography in the fifties, specifically the photography of Gordon Parks and Robert Frank’s photography in The Americans. The historiographical discussions surrounding the civil rights photography of the sixties can become a starting point and a lens through which we can analyze the photography of Parks and Frank in the fifties. Because as Gitlin notes, the
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fifties in a sense have become shaped by the sixties (12). This argument offers a mode of interpretation of the photography of the fifties that is shaped by the photography of the sixties. In the first chapter of this thesis, I explore the historiographical discussion surrounding the civil rights photography of the sixties, arguing that the two modes of civil rights photography in the sixties discussed, offer a third mode of interpretation through which we can analyze the photography of Gordon Parks & Robert Frank.
In analyzing the photography of Robert Frank and Gordon Parks in the fifties I do not only want to illustrate their depiction of segregation and the oppressed societal position of black Americans but also make an argument about their differing visions of the future for black Americans. The fifties can be marked as the last decade of the ‘status quo’ of the Jim Crow segregation era before it erupted in the demonstrations and actions of the civil rights era in the 1960’s. I will argue that Robert Frank and Gordon Parks in their photography during this decade, both not only offered a critique of the societal problems of segregation and racism in the United States, but also offered differing visions for a better future for black Americans. Differing visions that would be part of the cultural debate in the following decades and to this day. The central analytical question this paper then tries to answer is, what vision for the future of black Americans do Robert Frank & Gordon Parks present in their photography during the 1950s?
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Chapter 1: The Historiographical Discussion of Civil Rights Photography
In 2011 Martin A. Berger, currently acting dean of the arts and professor of history of art and visual culture at the University of California at Santa Cruz, published his book called Seeing
Through Race: A Reinterpretation of Civil Rights Photography. Reviewer Jack Taylor notes
that in this book, Berger: “Challenges dominant narratives concerning civil rights
photography” (152). The dominant narratives he talks about are the violent images of white southern violence against black victims. Berger accuses northern white progressives of depicting black protesters as inactive victims. “In trying to depict black protesters
sympathetically, progressive whites described them as inactive, which in the racial logic of the day equaled normal and safe” (23). As Taylor points out as well, “The problem with these images for Berger is that they frame the narrative in terms of whites being in charge and African Americans as victims of insurmountable oppression” (154). It is civil rights
photography as the depiction of the white, violent, southern oppressors against the inactive; blacks that Berger criticizes as photography that keeps enforcing underlying racial values. Berger notes: “The images could then generate sympathetic reaction and incremental reforms for blacks without disturbing the underlying racial values that allowed social inequalities and even violence to continue” (47). It is this criticism of the dominant narratives of civil rights photography that inspired Sara Wood, lecturer in American literature and culture at
Birmingham University, to explore civil rights photography that showed more active, albeit subtle black resistance through her essay, “Civil Rights Photography and the Everyday”. But before I explore her work further there is one more aspect of Berger’s book that needs to be discussed.
Berger also made the point that to analyze photography, it is not only important to look at the photographs itself, but also at how the photographs were selected. As he remarks: “While the white media could have selected any number of stories to tell they consistently framed the story as a narrative of spectacular violence” (3). Berger thus argues that the way the white media selected the photographs influenced the narrative these photographs told, one of black passive victimhood and either white oppression or white sympathy. Jack Taylor therefore notes about Berger’s argument surrounding the importance of photograph selection: “The selection of photographs makes the story what it is, not the photograph itself” (154). According to Taylor this is a break with traditional photographical analysis, as he argues regarding Berger: “It is precisely at this juncture that we are introduced to a fresh
interpretation not only of civil rights photography but also of photography more generally” (Taylor 153). The selection of photographs being just as important as the photograph itself
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regarding analysis is something that I shall take into consideration and further explore in the chapter where I outline my own analytical methodology and photograph selection. Especially regarding the analysis of Robert Frank’s work, it will be important to also look at his own process selecting the photographs for his book The Americans. Because during his travels through the United States he shot many rolls of film.
But first we have to dive deeper into the historiographical discussion regarding civil rights photography in which I want to place the work of Robert Frank and Gordon Parks. Berger’s book, Seeing Through Race: A Reinterpretation of Civil Rights Photography in which he criticizes dominant narratives within civil rights photography was used as a
springboard by Sara Wood in her paper, “Civil Rights Photography and the Everyday”. She opens her paper acknowledging the pivotal role that photography has played within the civil rights struggle as something that is widely acknowledged and well documented (67). Just as Berger, she points out that “Many of the photographs focused on the violence meted out against African Americans” (67). One of the most pivotal photographs that has “secured a central place in the collective visual memory of the 1960s” (67) was a photograph called Man
Confronts Police Dog by Charles Moore where a member of the police force attacks a black
marcher with one arm raised to strike while pulling a leashed dog towards the young man’s body (Wood 68). This iconic picture is one of the photographs that established the trope of active violence and passive victimhood as central to civil rights activism. The problem that these iconic photographs have created, as Berger and also Leigh Raiford, associate professor of African American Studies, point out is that the entire civil rights movement seems to be remembered through this lens of violence and resistance, reducing the movement to the photographs of Birmingham. As Raiford notices: “Almost the entirety of the civil rights movement is captured, quite literally, in the photographs of Birmingham 1963” (2).
Sara Wood puts attention to a different form of civil rights photography. She focuses on documentary photography that depicts the small everyday actions of black American protesters in opposition to Jim Crow segregation. Wood notes: “The closed cupboard, the grounded elevator, and the halted truck dramatize the link between noncompliance with the status quo, as represented by such mundane tasks and fully fledged protest” (70). Although this opens up a very broad spectrum of photography that can be placed under ‘civil rights photography of the everyday’, Wood focuses on a couple specific subjects of civil rights photography. The first one she discusses are the sit-ins in diners that she notes started in 1960. As Wood argues: “The student-led movement began in February 1960, when four African Americans from the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina took seats at the
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segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro. When they were denied service, they refused to leave” (70-71). These sit-ins were very effective in exposing the dynamics of segregation and were a vision of participatory citizenship that the protesters where fighting for (Wood 71). Nevertheless, some of these sit-ins still resulted in spectacular photographs that in some ways fall in the trope of white aggression and black victimhood. Such as a photograph from Fred Blackwell called Sit-in at Woolworth’s Lunch Counter, shot May 28 1963. The African American protesters are surrounded by white aggressive protesters that have thrown sugar and ketchup over them. Wood notices: “Its depiction of a confrontation between determined nonviolent activists and resistant white protestors is characteristic of the canon of civil rights photography. Yet, while Blackwell’s photograph portrays a scene of heightened conflict… it also attests to the underlying threat of force that pervades everyday life” (71). So, although it depicts protest and aggression it also shows the mundane and ‘everydayness’ of southern segregation. Other sit-ins did not have this aggressive spectacle but showed civil rights activism through the disruption of everyday segregation. As Wood states: “At the same time, the sit-in also become an opportunity to stage a different version of an everyday,
characterized by racial integration and participation in self-initiated political action” (73). The disruption of everyday segregation through self-initiated political participation is also the center of the second genre of civil rights photography of the everyday that Wood discusses. She focuses on the photography surrounding voter registration campaigns where African Americans would stand and wait in line to register to vote, while they knew that at the end of the line, they might face hostile intimidation. Wood notices: “One of the main deterrents to registration was the public posting of names and addresses, which left would-be voters susceptible to intimidation from employers, terror groups like the Klan and White Citizens Councils” (82). Yet there is no aggression, violence or trope of black victimhood in these pictures. Wood also states that: “The line becomes a means to capture the individuality and collective unity of those waiting to participate in the vote and is recast in these images as a site of fulfillment and agency” (83). The purpose of Sara Wood’s paper is to illustrate a new mode of civil rights photography that shows peaceful economic and political disruption of the everyday, mundane realities of Jim Crow segregation and the oppression that it causes. Wood argues: “The quiet, understated images discussed in this essay reflect the political aspirations and philosophies of the freedom movement as manifested in the otherwise unremarkable rituals of daily life” (83). And furthermore states: “Rather than documenting moments of high drama, they offer a glimpse of long-running processes of profound political change in the arena of the everyday” (84).
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If the first mode of civil rights photography is the trope of black victimhood and white violence, illustrated for examples in the photographs of the Birmingham revolts, then the second mode is the civil rights photography of the everyday. It is photography that depicts quiet resistance against the mundane but oppressive realities of Jim Crow segregation. Sara Wood moves the conversation from a violent civil rights photography to a quieter civil rights photography of the everyday. Yet I would argue it leaves open a third mode of civil rights photography.
The photography still focuses on resistance movements in the 1960’s. As I’ve
discussed in the introduction, the fifties were shaped by the sixties. It is therefore logical that we can use this historiographical discussion about the civil rights photography of the sixties as a lens into the photography of the fifties. Within her paper Wood references one photograph shot by Gordon Parks on his assignment shooting segregation in Alabama in 1956. Woods notices: “Key campaigns coalesced in and around the places where the daily indignities of segregation were most keenly felt” (69). It is certainly true that there was already resistance to segregation in the fifties. The world-famous refusal of Rosa Parks to sit in the back of the bus in Montgomery took place in 1955. However, simultaneously it was also a decade where the status quo of segregation was still mostly in place. As I’ve argued it was a decade that was marked by a dominant sense of social and cultural cohesion and unity. It was only at the turn of the decade and in the sixties that the underlying tensions of social and racial problems that were present but ignored in the fifties erupted in protests and new movements. It is here that I argue the third mode of photography comes in. If Sara Wood talks about organized and self-initiated disruption of the status quo of everyday segregation, the third mode is the actual depiction of everyday segregation and racial oppression in the 1950’s, that drew attention towards the issue. It is here that the work of Gordon Parks & Robert Frank becomes relevant.
Both Gordon Parks & Robert Frank present in their work from the 1950’s a view of the everyday realities of racism and segregation in the South. They do not focus so much on active resistance and protests, neither in the form of protests turned violent, nor in the
showing of everyday, self-initiated resistance and political participation. Instead, I will argue their photography showed the status quo of everyday segregation and the nuanced realities of this oppression. Nevertheless, I will also argue that although their photography is similar in its depiction of segregation, their photography differs in the visions for the future they present regarding black Americans in the United States. Through analyzing a selection of photographs of each photographer, I will argue that Parks presented a vision of a future of social and economic participation and integration, that this was the answer to the status quo of
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segregation and racism he depicted in his photography. Robert Frank however, I will argue, has a vision of finding freedom in a sense of cultural expression and uniqueness, that white Americans lack.
To make these arguments I will thoroughly analyze a selection of photographs from both photographers. But this entails that I shall first outline an analytical methodology of photography and create a selection of photographs that I shall analyze.
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Chapter 1.2: Analytical Methodology & Photograph Selection
The purpose of this thesis is to analyze how the photography of Robert Frank in The
Americans and Gordon Parks’ in The Restraints: Open & Hidden, and Segregation Story
depict the everyday realities of segregation and how they differentiate in their proposed visions of the future of black Americans in America. However, to analyze their photography we first must establish a methodological framework. Making an argument about the meaning of photographs brings up various factors to take into account. What the photographs depict of course but also the context in which they are presented, authorial intent, the interpretations of other scholars, the relation of the photograph to the other photographs it is depicted with etc. In addition, photography finds itself as a visual medium and craft also in the realm of the artistic and symbolical. This can make the meaning of a photograph in the optimistic sense; open for interpretation. But as Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography notes that photography can also be determined as “unclassifiable” (4). In his eyes it is almost impossible to determine photography’s meaning and classify it in different categories.
Nevertheless, in this chapter I shall first layout an analytical framework for
photography, and more specifically, documentary photography. The core of my analytical method shall consist of exploring the authorial intent with which the photographs were taken, the reception of the photographs and what has been said about them by other scholars. Finally, I shall claim the interpretational freedom from where, by closely looking at the what the photographs depict in combination with the technical aspects of the photographs, I will give my own interpretation. I shall go further into these specific modes of analysis after I have discussed documentary photography as a whole and also Robert Frank’s and Gordon Parks’ own perspectives on documentary photography.
The second part of this chapter is dedicated to the selection and introduction of the photographs I will be analyzing. I have already identified the specific photography projects of both Robert Frank and Gordon Parks that the analysis will focus on, The Americans and the photographs published in The Restraints: Open & Hidden in combination with some of the unpublished pictures taken during the same project where Gordon Parks travelled to Alabama. Not every photograph in these projects will the most relevant to my central arguments.
Especially The Americans is a project that has a wider scope than merely depicting everyday segregation. There will also be a differentiation between the photographs selected for my arguments about the depiction of everyday segregation in the next chapter and the
photographs selected to illustrate my argument about different visions of the future in chapter three.
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Frank notes in his application to the Guggenheim project: “What I have in mind, then is observation and record what one naturalized American finds to see in the United States that signifies the kind of civilization born here and spreading elsewhere.” (Frank, Guggenheim
Application). As mentioned in the introduction of this paper, this sentence indicates the simple
intention to document America through his photography. There is no indication of a specific purpose or argument regarding his photography project, to expose poverty or racism for example. Nevertheless, in reality Frank was extremely ambitious in creating a photography project that held meaning and had a specific vision behind it. As Jonathan Day, professor of transmedia arts, notes in his book Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans’: The Art of Documentary
Photography: “He wanted to do more than simply document, acknowledging that
photography is never objective, and thus running against the view still held by many who were involved in documentary work at the time” (24). It is here that we find the two, in a sense paradoxical, elements of documentary photography. One the one hand it is the process of depicting reality, of objective data collection, of the mechanical reproduction of reality. But secondly it presents a vision and argument, from the photographer. The role of photographer and authorial intent cannot be understated as in Frank’s opinion the best photographs find a balance between depicting the reality and humanity of the moment and the vision of the photographer. As Frank is quoted in Aperture in 1961: “There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment. This kind of photography is realism. But realism is not enough—there has to be vision, and the two together can make a good photograph. It is difficult to describe this thin line where matter ends and mind begins” (qtd. in Bennett 22). This notion of authorial intent is reflected by Gordon Parks when he states that photography is his choice of weapon, a tool to fight poverty and racism. But how do these photographers establish their vision in their photography? Where are the limitations of using authorial intent in this analysis?
The first side of the documentary photograph, the side of realism, ‘the humanity of the moment’, was mostly established by Frank through his way of shooting for the Americans. He rarely directed his subjects and if possible, shot them without even being noticed at all. New technologies in camera development, such as simply smaller cameras allowed him to shoot ‘from the hip’. As Jonathan Day mentions: “The role played by technological innovations in artistic effort should not be underplayed… so the ‘miniature camera,’ as the 35mm Leica was described, and 35mm film facilitated The Americans” (29). Day furthermore argues: “They allowed him to wander inconspicuously around America and capture its secret moments, generally without being observed himself” (29). This style of shooting allowed Robert Frank
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to capture the humanity of the moment. However, although the choice to shoot this way indicates a specific stylistic vision of capturing the humanity of the moment, the fact that Frank chooses to not direct his subjects limits the realization of his specific arguments and vision. The authorial intent that defines the Americans is then mostly created not when he was shooting, but by the selection of his photographs after his year of travelling through the United States. When he was done travelling, he had over 700 rolls of film from which he ultimately selected just 83 photographs that would become The Americans. This process of selection was a way of working that very much excited Frank as he saw the photography book as an answer to the disempowerment of photographers by magazines such as Life, that limited the vision of photographers. As Ulrich Keller, notes in his book The Highway as Habitat, A
Roy Stryker Documentation, 1943-1955: “The selection of pictures, their co-ordination and
captions and text, the visual presentation and ideological ‘slant’ of the story—all these matters lay in the hands of numerous specialists from lay-out man to art director” (23). There was a lack of control for photographers in realizing their vision after they handed over the
photographs to the magazines. As Jonathan Day argues: “Many magazines, then almost discouraged the vision on the part of the photographer. They were craftsmen who fulfilled a role, obeyed a brief (23). In producing the Americans, Robert Frank had full freedom in creating his own vision both in shooting the photographs and in the selection of photographs for his book. The selection is very significant in the authorial intent of his vision as it is such a small selection out of so many photographs. There are only two photographs within the Americans that illustrate the realities of everyday segregation but since they are part of the relatively smart selection of photographs chosen for the book and one of them was chosen by Frank for the cover, it still illustrates how much segregation meant to Frank in his vision for his work. I will explore this further in the photograph selection part of this chapter.
It is interesting to note that where Frank freed himself of the restraints on his vision imposed by magazines such as Life, which allowed him to select the photographs for The
Americans himself, Gordon Parks shot his photographs of segregation in Alabama on
assignment for Life. He thus was not fully free in selecting his own photographs for the resulting article and furthermore many photographs would not be publicly seen until they were discovered in 2014, 8 years after his death in 2006. These pictures would later be published in a photography book similar to The Americans under his name. The book was called Segregation Story. But of course, as it was posthumously, he was not involved in its creation and the selection of photographs. Analyzing Gordon Parks’ photographs, I shall thus focus mostly on the photographs themselves and their qualities, instead of their selection.
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The last aspect of authorial intent that needs to be taken into account, when analyzing photographs, is also the most straightforward one, language. Robert Frank and Gordon Parks might have commented on the meaning and intention of their photographs but it cannot be said that the meaning of a photograph can just be determined by what the creator said about it. Firstly, the meaning of a photograph not only has meaning because of what the photographer has captured and his vision, but also the historical, political and social circumstances in which the photograph is viewed. The meaning of a photograph is thus also determined by scholars, critics and personal interpretation. I will discuss this aspect of my analytical method in the next paragraph but it must also be noted that using the photographer’s comments on his work for analytical purposes can also be limited by the photographer’s refusal to explain his work. This is especially relevant in the case of Robert Frank as he wanted to let the photographs speak for themselves. Day notes: “He (Frank) wrote that he wished to create a document, the visual impact of which will nullify explanation. He sought to escape the tyranny of words” (59). Frank would become notorious in his refusal to explain his work. The photographs in the
Americans are accompanied with a blank page next to them, only titled with a short
description such as Trolley--New Orleans. Eamonn McCabe who was picture editor of The Guardian, wrote in the foreword of Day’s book:
“Robert Frank never did say very much and there is not a single word by him in The
Americans… you get the impression that even the meagre captions at the end of the
book were reluctantly dragged out of him by some poor curator or editor in search of at least some information about a set of some of the greatest photographs ever taken” (McCabe in Day ix).
RJ Smith who wrote a biography on Robert Frank mentions: “It has been said that he stopped doing interviews, pulled back from public scrutiny, and went into hiding after The Americans began to get attention. Frank wants his work to speak for him” (7). This illustrates that Robert Frank, although realizing his vision, also wants to leave room for the critics, scholars and general viewers to determine the meaning of his photographs. This brings me to the second aspect of my analytical framework, reviews and scholarly sources.
I will also draw upon other scholarly work that analyzed the photography of Gordon Parks and Robert Frank. With regards to Gordon Parks I will draw from scholarly work from among others Kimberly Lamm, assistant professor in the women’s studies, who wrote a paper called “Between the Open and the Hidden: Clothing, Segregation, and the Feminine
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Archive in the Photographs of Gordon Parks”. In her paper she argues that Parks’ photographs in The Restraints: Open and Hidden are influenced by his background in fashion photography and highlight the counter archival pressure black femininity places on Jim Crow segregation (134). Although Lamn focuses primarily on gender, her paper will be used to support my argument that, contrary to Robert Frank, Gordon Parks depicted equal social and economic participation as an answer to the oppression of segregation. It also illustrates the role that Gordon Parks’ fashion photography plays within his civil rights photography. I will also use “Harlem in Furs: Race and Fashion in the Photography of Gordon Parks” a paper by Jesús Constantino, Assistant Professor of American Literary Studies, to make this argument.
Some of the secondary scholarly literature I will use to make my analysis of Robert Frank’s photographs consist of Jonathan Day’s book Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans’: The
Art of Documentary Photography and peer-reviewed essays such as “The Photographer in
The Beat-Hipster Idiom” by George Cotkin, and “Robert Frank and Two Babies: The Americans at the Met” by Weena Perry. I will use the analysis of these scholars as reference points for my own analysis but also build upon their arguments and sometimes question them. Because the third part of my methodological approach is making my own interpretations through a close reading of the selected photographs, it is important to note that I take some interpretational freedom with regards to the analysis of these photographs. Close reading is interpretational analysis where the spectator of the photograph makes an interpretation by carefully examining the elements of the photograph. Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida:
Reflections on Photography notes that there are three practices with regards to a photograph.
The operator makes the photograph, the spectrum is the person or object in the photograph and the spectator looks at the photograph (32). To be the spectator of a photograph is not a passive action. Spectators actively engage and determine the meaning of the photograph by their interpretations. They add to the so-called photographic discourse. It is here where the process of close reading offers interpretational freedom. In the next paragraphs I will briefly introduce the photograph selection for my analysis. I will discuss why I choose those
photographs and what they depict.
The Americans was a project with a larger scope than just photographing segregation
in the South. As Frank mentions in his Guggenheim application, “The making of a broad, voluminous record of things American, past and present” (Frank, Guggenheim Application). Although every photograph in The Americans was carefully selected over a period of months by Robert Frank, what they depict is a varied look at America. There are only two
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these are Trolley--New Orleans and Charleston--South Carolina. Trolley—New Orleans depicts the sideview of a trolley with behind the open windows, six people. A white man, a white woman and two white children in the front and a black man and black woman in the back. Charleston-South Carolina depicts a black caregiver holding a white baby. Although these are the only pictures that depict segregation in The Americans their significance cannot be understated and photographing segregation became an important aspect of Robert Frank’s vision. Trolley--New Orleans ultimately was chosen by Frank for the cover of his book. In the following chapter I will discuss Frank’s experience with segregation during his road trip in depth and analyze these two photographs. Especially the photograph Charleston-South
Caroline is interesting as a very similar photograph was shot by Gordon Parks in Alabama
during his assignment. I will explore the symbolism of this image, a black caregiver holding a white baby as a signifier of racism and segregation, all the way back to Alexis de Tocqueville. Although there are only two photographs that clearly depict the realities of segregation in The
Americans there is a significantly larger percentage of photographs that depict black
Americans. These photographs often show black Americans away from white Americans and in the final chapter of this analysis I argue that Robert Frank, through his photography
indicates that black Americans actually find a freedom and joy that is not found by the white Americans.
It is also important to note that there are significant themes in The Americans that shall be largely ignored in this analysis. Throughout The Americans one can find recurring
photographs that depict flags, jukeboxes and cars. Jonathan Day in his book American
Witness focusses his analysis largely on these themes. But this analysis will focus on the
people, not the objects, presented in The Americans. The photographs selected for the final chapter of this thesis consist mostly of photographs that depict black Americans in isolation from white Americans. These are photographs such as Belle Isle – Detroit, Beaufort – South
Carolina and Indianapolis. I will use these photographs in the third chapter where I will argue
that Robert Frank, in his vision, depicts black Americans in a way where he sees a freedom and way of living that is preferable to the capitalist and consumerist lifestyle of white
Americans, despite the everyday realities of segregation. In order to make this argument I will present a selection of photographs of white Americans in The Americans that will show this contrast. These are photographs such as Movie Premiere--Hollywood, Butte–Montana, Canal
Street–New Orleans, Hotel Lobby–Miami Beach, Charity Ball–New York City and Mens’ Room–Railway Station Memphis. All these photographs are examples of what Jack Kerouac
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film” (6). In chapter three I will explore how Frank presents a vision of anti-consumerism and anti-capitalism, how he is very critical in his photography of the ‘American dream’ and both the working class and the wealthy. I will argue that from this perspective, he presents African Americans as the counter culture that is in a sense more free and happier than white
Americans. My argument will be that this vision stands in opposition to what Parks proposes in his photography as the answer to the oppression of segregation, which is economic
participation and achieving prosperity for black Americans.
Where the photographs I’ve selected from The Americans are very specific in their purpose for each chapter, there will be more of a crossover with regards to the photographs selected from Gordon Parks. Nevertheless, his project for Life capturing segregation in Alabama in 1956 consisted roughly of two parts. The first part of his trip he would focus on photographing Willie Causey and his family who had a small sharecropping and woodcutting business. Eventually Parks was able to get the various family members together and he
photographed the different generations, mostly close to or inside their house. At the end of the project Parks would be contacted by the Life office in New York to photograph segregated facilities. This resulted in a number of photographs that will be central to this analysis as they represent the everyday realities of segregation. These are photographs such as Ondria Tanner
and her Grandmother Window Shopping--Mobile Alabama 1956; Department Store, Mobile Alabama 1956; Untitled, Shady Grove—Alabama, 1956; At Segregated Drinking Fountain, Mobile Alabama and Airline Terminal, Atlanta Georgia, 1956. The last one depicts a black
caregiver and white baby similar to the photograph by Robert Frank in South Carolina. These photographs not only show the realities of everyday segregation but as I will argue also show a vision of economic and social integration and participation for black Americans with white America that Gordon Parks presents as the answer to the oppression of segregation. This sense of hope is also present within his photograph Untitled, Alabama 1956 where he shows three boys standing behind a fence, one of them white, looking into the camera. I will explore these photographs in the coming chapters. Note for reference that all of Gordon Parks’
photographs are available through the Gordon Parks Foundation’s webpage, “Segregation in the South, 1956”. The link to the webpage can be found in the literature list at the end of this thesis.
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Chapter 2: The Status Quo: Depictions of Everyday Segregation in the Photography of Robert Frank & Gordon Parks
Earlier in this thesis I’ve argued for a third mode of civil rights photography, that of the depiction of the status quo of everyday segregation and racism in the 1950’s. I’ve selected a body of work from both Gordon Parks & Robert Frank from the 1950’s. Regarding Robert Frank all the photographs come from his magnus opus The Americans, while the selected photographs from Gordon Parks primarily come from his project for Life where he captured segregation in Alabama in 1955, both a selection of pictures that was in the original life magazine article called Restraints: Open and Hidden and the later discovered additional photographs under the label ‘segregation story’. These selected photographs were shown in various exhibitions and published in a book with the same title. Through the online Gordon Parks foundation, I have selected various photographs to analyze. In this chapter I will analyze the photographs from both photographers to argue that both photographers depicted the segregation of the south in 1955, at a cultural turning point right before the more active resistance and protests of the civil-rights movement.
In the first chapter of this thesis I’ve explored a historiographical discussion
surrounding civil rights photography and capturing civil rights photography of the everyday. I proposed a third mode of civil rights photography which was the photographing of the status quo; of the everyday realities of segregation in 1955 and 1956. In this chapter I will analyze how both Gordon Parks and Robert Frank in their projects The Americans and The Restraints:
Open and Hidden photographed the everyday realities of the status quo, of everyday
segregation in a similar way. How they moved away from tropes of violent scenes of racism and protest but instead focused on various depictions of everyday segregation. In the first paragraphs the focus will be on Robert Frank’s and Gordon Parks’ views on segregation and how their respective projects where formed. I will then go on to analyze the selected
photographs from both photographers. The overall result of this chapter will be firmly placing Gordon Parks and Robert Frank together as photographers with a similar vision towards the everyday realities of segregation.
Robert Frank grew up in Switzerland, in a relatively wealthy Jewish family. His father was a businessman. As Frank mentions at a National Gallery of Art lecture in 2009; his father liked good things, good food and a good life. Frank would spend his life escaping the
mundanity of this middle-class prosperity, that he not only experienced in his family but in Switzerland as a whole. As Smith notes in American Witness: “That safety, orderliness, the rigid hewing to business and decorum, the methodical predictability, the neatness of the
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sidewalks, and the knowledge that your block was watched—all are familiar to those who live there. Those qualities, Frank would explain later, sucked the air out of him” (11).
Nevertheless, this didn’t mean that Frank didn’t experience oppression or adversity during his youth. The mundanity and prosperity of his middle-class upbringing stands in stark contrast with the big part of his youth that was overshadowed by the rise and reign of the Nazi regime. Smith, quotes Frank himself, regarding growing up with the threat of Nazi Germany looming over Switzerland: “It was an unforgettable situation. I watched the grownups decide what to do—when to change your name, whatever. It’s on the radio every day. You hear that guy [Hitler] talking, threatening, cursing the Jews. It’s forever in your mind, like a smell, the voice of that man” (qtd. in Smith 21). Frank lived in Switzerland where, throughout World War II the oppression and evil of the Nazi Regime never fully took hold but always loomed. The threat of an impending invasion by Hitler was always there, and Frank and his family where aware what this would mean for them as Jewish people. But the threat never materialized. I would argue that his notion, of the underlying tension and threat of such an oppressive regime, in many ways shaped Robert Frank’s photography that would be the Americans. He would, through his photographs expose the underlying tensions and realities of the United States while focusing on those living on the margins of society. He does this among others in his two photographs where he explores the segregation of the South, Charleston- South
Carolina & Trolley- New Orleans. Although Frank, as a Jewish immigrant that had
experienced the threat of being a minority and oppressed group, sympathized with those on the margins of American society, he didn’t completely understand the full realities of
segregation in the South as he had spent most of his time in America living in New York. He of course was aware of segregation from reading about it in newspapers and other
publications but during his trip he experienced and captured it himself for the first time.
Trolley- New Orleans shows us a trolley in New Orleans, but more than that it is an
incredibly poignant image. Through the window of the trolley we see six people. A white man in the front, seemingly looking towards the camera but his eyes and his expression are not visible because of the reflection of the sunlight on the window. Behind him we see a woman, seemingly upper-class, looking into the camera with a look of contempt. Right behind her we find two children, a boy and a young girl, the boy wearing a suit. He looks at the camera with a slight arrogance. In the fourth window we find a black man, his hand hanging out of the window and staring into the camera with a poignant sadness. In the final window we see a black woman looking out of the window, the only person in the photograph that does not look directly at the camera. As Robert Frank’s photography book is called The Americans it is
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telling that he decided on this photograph for the cover. The photograph showcases that reality of America’s racial and even gendered realities. The fact that the black Americans are in the back of the trolley is of course not a coincidence, they were legally obligated to be. Day notes: “The photograph was taken before the US Congress ruled that segregated buses were unconstitutional, on 20 December 1956” (116). But the sequence of people also coincidentally showcases the entire social hierarchy of America in the fifties. The white man in the front, followed by the white woman, the children, a black man and finally a black woman.
The strongest elements within the photograph are the white woman, looking at the camera, exuding an emotion seemingly of content and derision towards the camera and the man behind it. Two seats behind her we find a black man who’s also looking towards the camera but who exudes an entirely different emotion than the woman. A look of puzzlement, confusion and sadness. His eyes in a sense ask the question why he is in this reality of
segregation, racism and oppression. As George Cotkin notes: “The pain and despair in the face of one black man immediately draw our attention” (30). The look of the woman in front however seems to be one of anger and derision. As if she is aware that Frank is capturing and questioning the everyday realities and evil of the segregation era, and she is angry that he dares to do that. It is important to note that this reading of the faces and emotions in this photograph is done by reading the photograph in the context and intention of its creation. It is of course impossible to without a doubt determine what exactly inspired the emotions shown in the photograph. Therefore, there can be variety in its interpretation. Maybe the woman merely didn’t like to be photographed or she was caught off guard. Robert Frank didn’t position his subjects or interacted with them. The photograph was taken in the blink of an eye. Regarding the interpretation of the photograph, as I’ve discussed this is done within the context of Roland Barthes’ conceptualization of the active interpretation of the spectator and close reading interpretation. Meaning is created just as much by the reader as by the
photograph and its creator. Still, all the elements of the photograph together and the vision and context of the shot, determines it’s meaning and the meaning of her expression. Day describes the woman as: “Black hair and a dark coat frame her disdain, an expression as evil as the witch in MGM’s hugely popular 1939 version of The Wizard of Oz” (115).
Attention must also be paid to the children in the middle of the photograph. Especially the boy’s expression is telling. He is neatly dressed and looks at the camera with a look of confidence and authority that is not expected for a boy his age. As a white boy he exudes a power that is completely lacking in the expression of the larger and adult black man behind him, exemplifying the realities of racial status. Day notes: “The white boy looks trapped, but
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at the same time holds himself with a confidence entirely lacking from the muscular adult behind” (116). This dynamic of exuding confidence and authority from a white child in contrast to the subjugated position of a black adult is something that also comes back within another one of Frank’s photographs, Charleston-South Carolina. I will return to this
photograph later in this chapter.
The last element of Trolley--New Orleans that I want to discuss are the windows of the trolley that separate all of the passengers. The windows function as dividers of these different racial and gendered classes, exemplifying the segregated realities of America in the 1950’s. Cotkin even goes as far as to compare the window bars with jail bars. “He is framed, as if in prison, by the windows of the vehicle and is thus chained to the social realities of the
segregation era” (31). The bars of the windows separate each of the passengers, this way although they are all close together in the trolley, they are still isolated from each other and alone. Day notes: “Despite their shared space, the framing reveals their intense solitude, loneliness and separation” (134).
Trolley--New Orleans is thus an incredibly sad and poignant photograph that shows
the realities of racism and segregation in America. But it does so without falling into any tropes of spectacle, of violence and aggression by white Americans against black Americans. For this reason, I argue the photograph falls perfectly in the third mode of civil rights
photography I have set in the first chapter. The photograph shows the status quo, the everyday realities of segregation in the fifties right before the cultural turning point where the civil rights era and resistance against these realities would fully explode. Day argues as well: “Frank’s image is uncomfortable. It examines racism in America without overtly representing it. The photograph’s tension exists in the unequal appearance and body language of its
subjects” (116). To what extent Frank actually had the intent of political change with this photograph is hard to assess. Day notes: “Trolley is one of the more clearly political images within the book, revealing with stark intensity the racial segregation within America during the mid-1950s” (134). As we have explored, Frank did sympathize with the plight of black Americans and was sensitive to the oppression of racism and segregation. But as Day argues as well: “The political intentionality of the photograph is difficult to assess. It was taken before the famous ‘bus boycott, which bemoaned and eventually caused the outlawing of segregated buses” (134). According to Day however Frank’s choice to place this photograph within The Americans after the all-white photograph Fourth of July – Jay, New York, clearly juxtaposes the flag, the symbol of nationhood and the constitution, with clear evidence of oppression and lack of equality (134).
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But, just as many other photographs in Frank’s book, which I shall discuss later, despite it’s overwhelming sadness, Trolley-New Orleans also holds a small amount of hope. The black woman at the end of the trolley is the only one looking away, seemingly content and thus escaping the isolation and entrapment of the trolley, and as Jonathan Day argues: “We are all, I suspect, looking for the unassuming Rosa Parks, quietly and unwittingly starting a revolution by refusing to give up her seat” (116). Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on December 1, 1955. Robert Frank took Trolley—New Orleans in the fall of 1955 merely weeks before it happened, so he was not aware of the significance. But every spectator of the photograph on the cover of The Americans most likely is.
Although Robert Frank’s experiences with the looming threat of Nazi Germany over Switzerland and his status as a Jewish immigrant in America made him sensitive and
sympathetic to the oppression of racism and segregation, a much more direct experience with these social realities was had by Gordon Parks. Gordon Parks is a black American himself and the first part of his youth he lived in the segregated South of the United States, Fort Scott, Kansas to be precise. Gordon Parks moved away however to St. Paul, Minnesota and from there to Chicago and New York. In his memoir A Choice of Weapons, Gordon Parks extensively writes about his youth and teenage years. The first chapter of the book is filled with references to death and extreme violence. This created a fear of death with Parks, as he explains in A Choice of Weapons: “When I was eleven, I became possessed of an exaggerated fear of death” (4). Much of the violence that Parks experienced was white on black violence with racism as the cause. Some of this violence he heard about or it happened in his social surroundings. With other violence he was the victim himself. Parks explains: “I was stoned and beaten and called ‘nigger,’ ‘black boy,’ ‘darky,’ ‘shine.’ These indignities came so often I began to accept them as normal. Yet I always fought back” (2). The first pages of Parks’ memoir heap his experiences with racist violence on top of each other. One example is his cousin who killed a white millhand after he called him ‘nigger’ and was afterwards hunted, and disappeared while Parks, “would lie awake nights wondering if the whites had killed my cousin” (4). Another example was a black gambler called Captain Tuck who was
mysteriously killed on the Frisco tracks (5). Parks also tells: “I saw a woman cut another woman to death” (6). The theme of racist violence runs throughout A Choice of Weapons and clearly impacted Gordon Parks deeply. It is surprising therefore that when he returned to the South, in order to photograph segregation in the Alabama, he photographed within the third mode of civil rights photography I established earlier, photographing the mundane, everyday realities of segregation instead of protests, acts of racist violence and the spectacular.
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However, throughout A Choice of Weapons there runs another theme that deeply affected Gordon Parks and that is very much present in his photography for The Restraints:
Open and Hidden. This theme is poverty. Only the first few pages of Parks’ memoir are set in
Kansas and his violent experiences in the South. The majority of the book are about Parks’ struggles with poverty after he moves to Minnesota because of his mother’s death. After a violent encounter with his brother in law, Parks was forced onto the streets, homeless and fending for himself at fifteen. Although his parents where poor, Parks acknowledged it never really was a concern during his childhood (14). But soon after he was on the streets the hardship of poverty came over him, Parks writes: “So now, in a way, poverty seemed new to me. And its embarrassment was as painful as the hunger it brought” (15). This made him determined to become successful and prove everyone wrong. He notes: “Perhaps he did me a favor by pushing me out. Early manhood, after all, was my inheritance; the sooner it began the better” (15).
Throughout the next chapters Parks writes about his struggles with poverty, getting jobs and living on the streets. He lived and worked in a whorehouse for a while, played piano for a failing band on the road and struggled often with hunger. Throughout this struggle with poverty, Parks went back and forth between seeing racism and white oppression as the cause of his struggles and feeling he was in charge of his own destiny. Parks writes in his memoir:
“The naïveté of youth, the frustrations of being black had me trapped, and achievement seemed almost impossible…But even then, I knew I couldn’t go on feeling condemned because of my color. I made up my mind, there in the cab of that truck, that I wouldn’t allow my life to be conditioned by what others thought or did, or give in to anyone who would have me be subservient” (Parks 45).
Gordon Parks would have many more subservient jobs, and struggles with being black as well, before he stumbled upon his calling. The first moment he realized that he became interested in photography, that moment too was marked with the struggle of poverty. Parks’ colleague Charlie had left a magazine out that Gordon picked up. It was here that Gordon Parks found photographs of photographers such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lang, Russell Lee and others (Parks 174). Parks writes: “These stark images of men, women and children, caught in their confusion and poverty, saddened me” (174).
The theme of poverty was incredibly important to Parks. It is thus not a surprise that when Parks was asked by Life to go to Alabama to capture segregation, a significant element
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in his photographs was poverty. As I introduced before, there were basically two parts to the photographs Parks took on his assignment. First, he focused on the Causey family and their extended family, the Thorston’s. He shot a significant number of photographs of the family members around and inside the house. Most of these photographs don’t show the realities of everyday segregation clearly as there is no white counter element in these photographs. They merely show these black Americans in their living spaces. The Causey’s had reached a relative: As is noted on the webpage of the Gordon Parks foundation: “For a black family in Alabama, the Causeys had reached a certain level of financial success, exemplified by a secondhand refrigerator and the Chevrolet sedan that Willie and his wife, Allie, an elementary school teacher, had slowly saved enough money to buy” (Gordon Parks Foundation). I argue that theme of poverty is strongly present in the photographs Parks took of the family. In the family photographs taken around their living spaces we often see sad and angry emotions, muddy, brown colors and a downward angle in the photographs. Take for example the
photograph Untitled, Shady Grove, Alabama, 1956 that depicts two boys, barefoot in the mud. One of the boy’s upper body is out of the frame, only his legs are visible. The other boy is squatting looking away into the distance, a frustrated and sad look on his face. The
surroundings of the boys are muddy and empty. Although the photograph is in color the color palette is brown and desaturated. It is also interesting to note that even though there is a lot of open space around the boys, the framing of the photographic still creates a sense of the restriction of movement. These photographic elements are present in various of Gordon Parks’ photographs during the projects for example Mother and Children, Mobile,
Alabama, 1956 and Untitled Alabama, 1956 where we see two grandparents and two
grandchildren. A sense of poverty and restriction of movement, coupled with troubled expression make up the elements of these photographs. The Life article The Restraints: Open
and Hidden would have its text written by Robert Wallace. In the opening paragraphs he
notes that the poverty seen in the housing of these black Americans is shared by many white southerners. But white southerners, if they have the financial means, can move anywhere they want, ‘negroes’ however, can only move to other segregated areas (Wallace 98). The poverty seen in the photographs of Gordon Parks is thus not only a financial restraint but also a restraint of segregation.
However, although these photographs don’t directly show the restraints of segregation through a white counter element, other photographs taken by Parks during his project do. The first photograph I want to discuss is Outside Looking In, Mobile Alabama, 1956 where we see six children looking through a fence, to a playground they are not allowed to play in.
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It is a poignant photograph that clearly depicts the third mode of civil rights photography I’ve established, the status quo of everyday segregation. The fence is literally a restraint of
movement and access for these innocent black American children. However, it is also a photograph that indicates Parks’ vision for the future, a future where that fence would disappear and the children would be free to walk upon the green grass of the playground and play, a future of social and economic inclusion. This is a different vision from what is
presented within Frank’s photographs as I will discuss in more depth in the following chapter. At the end of Parks’ assignment Life contacted him, asking if he would photograph ‘separate but equal’ facilities such as water fountains and store entrances. This resulted in photographs like At Segregated Drinking Fountain, Mobile Alabama 1956; Department Store,
Mobile Alabama, 1956; Ondria Tanner and her Grandmother Window Shopping and
Untitled, Shady Grove, Alabama, 1956. The last one having the same name as the photograph
with the squatting boy but depicting an ice-cream shop with a colored and white only counter. These photographs perfectly caption the everyday realities of segregation with the Tanner, Causey and Thornton family members standing next to ‘colored only’, ‘colored entrance’ and ‘colored’ windows, stores, ice-cream shops and drinking fountains. They depict the status quo of segregation in the South in a similar fashion as Robert Frank’s Trolley-New Orleans did, falling into the third mode of civil-rights photography, capturing the status quo of Southern segregation. However, there are also very important differences between the way Gordon Parks captured these photographs. The sadness that is present in Frank’s photograph is not present here. Also, although the ‘colored entrance’ and ‘colored only’ signs are present, attention is drawn away from them, to the people in the photographs, of which especially the women’s beautiful dresses capture the attention. As Lamm notes about the dresses the women in the photograph At Segregated Drinking Fountain, Mobile Alabama 1956 wear; the dresses “are clearly on display as clothing, but also as shapes and compositional forms that take the eye away from the fountains, the signage and their demarcation of space” (145). In the next chapter I will discuss how Parks presents a differing vision with regards to the answer to the oppression of segregation than Robert Frank. But I want to close this chapter, discussing two photographs, one by Parks and one by Frank that depict the same thing.
Robert Frank’s photograph Charleston-South Carolina and Gordon Parks’ photograph
Airline Terminal, Atlanta Georgia, 1956 both depict the same thing, a black female caretaker
holding a white baby. The specific elements of the photographs differ slightly. Parks’ picture is in color and also shows a white woman sitting on the left side in the terminal. The
