“I picked up a camera because it was my choice of weapons against what I hated most about the universe: racism, intolerance, poverty,” he once said.
It wasn’t just that Gordon Parks, who died yesterday, did any of the things that he did, even if he was “The pre-eminent American photojournalist of sub-Saharan descent.”
It was that he did SO many things and did them well.
Others have noted some of his other LIFE magazine covers, or his work on the movie Shaft. The image I remember the best is this photo by Parks of a woman named Ella Watson. He was an extraordinarily inspirational figure to me for as long as I can remember.
