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 [email protected] Thesis advisor: R. Janssens June 30 2020 1 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 2 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. 3 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: 4 “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 5 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.