Gordon Parks And The Fontanelle Family

from 8/1/06 from pseudo-intellectualism there's a really good slide show that is linked

When the subject of the Fontanelle family comes up, Parks becomes somber. "The problem in documenting a family like that," he explains, "is that, you wonder, in the end, whether you should have touched the family, or just left them alone." Parks questions the issue of altering lives, such as the Fontanelle family's, because of the tragic outcome of their story. Parks assignment began when LIFE managing editor Philip Kunhardt asked Parks why black people were rioting throughout urban areas of America. Parks answered Kunhardt by going to live with a black family for one month in Harlem. After assuring Bessie Fontanelle, the family matriarch, that Parks's essay would benefit the community, she welcomed him into her family's home in a decrepit Harlem tenement building. Here, the family is shown at a Harlem welfare office. "It was difficult," Parks admits. "The husband was unemployed, the family had no food, it was wintertime but the kids couldn't attend school because they had no winter clothes. And it was difficult not to immediately, being in my position, take money in, take food in, to ease their situation. Because the minute you do that you've lost your story. So you pray and hope that you can get your story over as quickly as possible, and that there will be a response from the public." Which is what happened, but before money poured in from the public, Parks had to stand back and watch the family suffer. With the funds LIFE and its readers contributed to the Fontanelles, a small house was bought on Long Island as a refuge for the family from the filth and chaos of the Harlem tenement. Three months after they moved in, the father [drunk at the time] burned down the house by dropping a lit cigarette on the family's new sofa. "The father died in the fire, little Kenneth, one of my favorites, died in the fire. Little Norman died mysteriously two years later, the other girl [sucking her thumb in the image shown here] died from AIDS, as did two of her sisters. The whole family was destroyed," Parks sighs.
I came across the article mentioned in an old 1968 Life Magazine that my wife bought (I guess not all her online purchases are frivolous). A search on the Fontanelle story came up with a piece on a 2004 award winning documentary called "Family Portraits" about the only two surviving family members "Another big festival winner was Patricia Riggen’s documentary Family Portrait, which received the New Line Cinema Award for Outstanding Achievement in Filmmaking. In this moving and insightful documentary, Richard Fontanelle and Diana Nash—the only surviving members of the family originally photographed in 1968 by Gordon Parks—render their own family portrait as they recount the challenges the family faced. Riggen,Parks and Fontanelle, who now works as a superintendent for Columbia University, recently were featured on NPR’s Tavis Smiley Show. Riggen spoke about the sadness surrounding the tale of the Fontanelle family, and the purpose of her documentary: “Right now, there are a million black kids that live in extreme poverty in this country. So what I’m hoping is to call some attention to that because what happened [in1968] is still happening right now.”
Here's a slide show I created from scans of this remarkable work of Parks

Gordon Parks 3

the audio is from npr on the occasion of Parks passing away at age 93 on 3/8/06

Filmmaker and photographer Gordon Parks has died. He was 93. Parks captured black America as a photographer for Life magazine, and then became Hollywood's first major black director with the hit Shaft. He also wrote fiction and was an accomplished composer. Gordon Parks, who captured the struggles and triumphs of black America as a photographer for Life magazine and then became Hollywood's first major black director with The Learning Tree and the box-office hit Shaft died Tuesday, a family member said. He was 93. Parks, who also wrote fiction and was an accomplished composer, died in New York, his nephew, Charles Parks, said in a telephone interview from Lawrence, Kan. He covered everything from fashion to politics to sports during his 20 years at Life, from 1948 to 1968. But as a photographer, he was perhaps best known for his gritty photo essays on the grinding effects of poverty in the United States and abroad and on the spirit of the civil rights movement. In 1961, his photographs in Life of a poor, ailing Brazilian boy named Flavio da Silva brought donations that saved the boy.
The Learning Tree was Parks' first film, in 1969. It was based on his 1963 autobiographical novel of the same name. Parks was born Nov. 30, 1912, in Fort Scott, Kan., the youngest of 15 children. In his 1990 autobiography, Voices in the Mirror, he remembered it as a world of racism and poverty, but also a world where his parents gave their children love, discipline and religious faith. In his autobiography, he recalled that being Life's only black photographer put him in a peculiar position when he covered the civil-rights movement. "Life magazine was eager to penetrate their ranks for stories, but the black movement thought of Life as just another white establishment out of tune with their cause," he wrote. He said his aim was to become "an objective reporter, but one with a subjective heart."

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Gordon Parks talks about a memorable photo essay he did for Life Magazine about the Fontanelle family

Gordon Parks

from fox sports network's series of vignettes that chronicle compelling stories of African Americans
from infoplease.com

Born: Nov. 30, 1912
Birthplace: Fort Scott, Kansas
Best known as an acclaimed photographer, Gordon Parks was also a highly accomplished writer, filmmaker, and composer. Growing up in poverty, Parks managed to become a premier fashion photographer in the 1940s, eventually working for Glamour, Vogue, and other glossy New York magazines. He became the first African American to work as a photographer for the Farm Security Administration, where he developed his powerful documentary style depicting slums, poverty, and the marginal existences of African Americans. Of his photography work for the FSA, he commented, “I had known poverty firsthand, but there I learned how to fight its evil--along with the evil of racism—with a camera.”
In 1948, he became a photographer for Life magazine—their first African American photographer-—and worked for Life over the next quarter century. His celebrated photojournalism included portrayals of Harlem gang warfare, profiles of leading American poets, the civil rights movement, Malcolm X, the Martin Luther King's death, and the Black Panthers. Parks also wrote the text accompanying some of his photo essays for Life.
Parks directed eight films, ranging from documentaries to thrillers. In 1969, he became the first black director for a major Hollywood studio when Warner Brothers released The Learning Tree, a film based on an autobiographical novel Parks wrote. From there he went on to several commercial successes, including Shaft (1971) and Shaft's Big Score (1972).
Over the years, Parks published a number of novels and memoirs as well as poetry. An extraordinary polymath, he also composed classical, blues, and popular music,
Died: March 7, 2006