John Edwin Mason: Documentary, Motorsports, Photo History

Gordon Parks at the Fulton Fish Market, New York, 1943

It's hard to overestimate the importance of Gordon Parks in the history of American photography.  This isn't just because for over two decades ('40s, '50s, and into the '60s) he was the only African-American working within the mainstream of the photographic profession.  It's also because of the extraordinarily beautiful and challenging photos that he made as a photojournalist, documentarian, and fashion photographer.  Parks did much more than make pictures, of course.  He was also a fine writer (his autobiographical novel, The Learning Tree, has an honored place in the American literary canon); a successful filmmaker (his movie Shaft is the mutha of all blaxploitation films); and a pretty fair composer.

In January 1942, when he arrived in Washington, DC, to join Roy Stryker's epic Farm Security Administration [FSA] documentary project, he was none of these things.  He married (with two kids), nearly 30, almost broke, and had been a serious photographer for only three years.  On the other hand, few people could have matched his ambition, talent, and capacity for hard work.

 

Gordon Parks:  New York, New York.  Dock stevedores at the Fulton fish market sending up baskets of fish from the holds of the boats to the docks where it is bought, stored in barrels and packed in ice for delivery to wholesalers.  1943.  (All the photographs in this entry are from the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information [FSA/OWI] Collection at the Library of Congress.  Click directly on any of the images to see larger versions.)

In a 1964 interview, Parks admitted that he didn't have much to offer the FSA as a photographer.  He was there to learn, and he and Stryker, his new boss, both knew it:  "I think that I was sort of a noble experiment for Roy."

If that was the case, it wasn't simply because Parks was the first and only African-American photographer on the FSA staff.  Stryker had often taken chances with aspiring photographers, and they had always paid off.  Many that Stryker had hired (or was to hire) -- Russell Lee, Esther Bubley, Arthur Rothstein -- were inexperienced but eager.  They were experiments that turned out well.  Though not a photographer himself, Stryker was as much a teacher as he was a manager.  Parks was, in this sense, yet another student in his finishing school for photographers.

(It is true, however, that Stryker, fearing the reaction of southern members of Congress to the hiring of a black man, had been reluctant to take Parks on and was cajoled into it by representatives of the liberal Rosenwald Fund, which funded Parks's appointment.)

Gordon Parks:  New York, New York.  Fulton fish market street scene.  1943.

Parks's work for Stryker at the FSA and, after late 1942, the Office of War Information [OWI] was highly uneven, ranging from the sublime to the merely competent.  That's no surprise, really.  In his book Half Past Autumn, Parks called his stay at the FSA/OWI his "apprenticeship."

One of the first photos that he made at the FSA became one of his most famous:  his portrait of Ella Watson, a charwoman in a government office building, which was part of a superb series documenting Watson's life and her struggle to raise her grandchildren.

In contrast, the photos that he made at New York's Fulton Fish Market, in the spring of 1943, show him as the apprentice that he was.

Gordon Parks:  New York, New York.  Fulton fish market dock stevedores unloading and weighing fish in the early morning.  1943.

None of his Fulton photos rise to the standard his best FSA/OWI work.  He didn't include any of them in Half Past Autumn, a career retrospective, even though the book contains nearly 50 pages of photos from his FSA/OWI years.  In fact, these photos have rarely been published at all.  (I've seen them in none of the magazines of the period, and, of the many books about Parks and about the FSA, I've found them only in Gilles Mora and Beverly W. Brannan's FSA:  The American Vision.)

Gordon Parks:  New York, New York.  Ice which is used to store fish on boats that bring their catches into Fulton fish market.  1943.

The Fulton photos came out of an assignment to document aspects of the American fishing trade, part of a government study of the food industry.  The country was at war, and Parks and Stryker were now part of the OWI, an agency with a mission to support the war effort, not social reform.  The days of investigating nation's social ills were over.

Gordon Parks:  New York, New York.  Fulton fish market hooker.  1943.

While none of the photos from Fulton are brilliant, many are strong.  Some, such as those at the beginning of this post, capture the market's energy and movement.

Gordon Parks:  New York, New York.  Dock stevedore at the Fulton fish market holding giant lobster claws.  1943.

Characteristically of Parks, there are several engaging portraits, some leavened with humor.

Gordon Parks:  New York, New York. Many of the Fulton fish market men are in the armed forces.  1943.

The war was never far from anyone's mind, and Parks made sure to reinforce that simple truth.  (If you click on the photo, you'll see a larger version and be able to read the names of the Fulton Fish Market men who were serving in the armed forces.)

Gordon Parks:  New York, New York.  Barrels of fish on the docks at Fulton fish market ready to be shipped to retailers.  1943.

It's tempting to try to find something in the Fulton series that anticipates Parks's stylistic signature.  Tempting, but futile, I think -- largely because it's hard to identify a stylistic signature in his protean body of work beyond, perhaps, an affinity for portraiture.  It's hard to imagine keywords or a catch phrase that can sum up his style, as we can for his contemporaries Henri Cartier-Bresson (elegant geometry), Walker Evans (Protestant austerity, artful artlessness), and Roy DeCarava (intimacy, murky depths).

Gordon Parks:  New York, New York.  Shipping fish by horse-drawn vehicle from Fulton fish market.  1943.

We can see, however, Parks developing his skills at producing a photo-essay.  At Life magazine, during the '50s and '60s (where he was once again the first and only black photographer) he became one of the great masters of the form.  (See, for instance, the still important 1963 story that he both wrote and photographed about what were then called the Black Muslims.)

Unknown photographer:  Gordon Parks, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information photographer, standing in office with Helen Wool seated at desk.  Ca. 1943.

We should understand the Fulton Fish Market series for what it is, the skillfully executed project of an apprentice.  That's very likely the way that Parks saw it. "I wish," he said in 1964, looking back at his time at the FSA/OWI, "...I stayed there longer and gotten there earlier."

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N.B.:  Because the photos in this entry were made by photographers employed by the United States government, they are not eligible for copyright protection.

Esther Bubley’s Erotic Photography

This must be the only photograph in the vast archives of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information [FSA/OWI] that can be described as dreamy, romantic, and frankly erotic.  Esther Bubley made it in January 1943, when she was just 21. (The young woman in the photo is very possibly one of Bubley’s sisters, two of whom lived in this boarding house and appear in several of her boarding house photos.)

Esther Bubley.  Washington, D.C.  A radio is company for this girl in her boardinghouse room.  January 1943.  All photos from the Congress Farm Security-Office of War Information collection at the Library of Congress.  (Click directly on the photo to see a larger version.)

At the time, Bubley was working for Roy Stryker in a darkroom at the Office of War information [OWI].  But that’s not where she wanted to be.  She wanted to be in the field, working as a documentary photographer.  When she was teenager, photos in the pages of Life magazine and those made by Stryker’s great documentary team in the Historical Section of the Farm Security Administration [FSA]--Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, Walker Evans, Russell Lee, Jack Delano, and others--fired her imagination and inspired her to become a photographer.  She had found her way to the OWI after attending a teachers college, in Wisconsin, an art school, in Minnesota, and working briefly and unsuccessfully as a product photographer for Vogue magazine.  Jobless and alone, she left New York, in 1942, and joined two of her sisters in Washington, DC.  She found work microfilming documents at the National Archives.  Quickly spotting her frustration, as well as her talent and ambition, a supervisor introduced her to Stryker, who agreed to take her on as a darkroom technician at the OWI, his documentary project’s new bureaucratic home.

Determined to move out of the darkroom and into the status of field photographer, Bubley devoted much of her free time to photography.  It was an intensely productive period in the young photographer’s life.  One of the results was a series of photos made at Dissin’s, a boarding house that catered Jewish young people, including Bubley’s sisters Claire and Enid.

Esther Bubley.  Washington, D.C.  A boardinghouse rule forbids men guest to come into girls' rooms and vice versa.  March 1943.

Later in life, Bubley said that she chose the boarding house project because her sisters live there and “it was easy to do.”   (See, Bonnie Yochelson and Tracy A. Schmid, Esther Bubley:  On Assignment.)  But there was more to it than that.  Bubley understood that World War II was causing large-scale changes in American society.  The expansion of industries and bureaucracies to serve war needs were drawing millions of people into cities all over the country.  The population of Washington, DC, for instance, grew by 300,000 people, during the war, many of them young women like Bubley and her sisters.  Among the social changes were a new opportunities for women, in employment and in terms of their personal autonomy.

Bubley was aware of these changes.  After all, she and her sisters were themselves among the millions of young people who left farms and small towns to seek a new world in the cities.  In notes that she wrote to accompany the photos that she made at Dissin’s, she said that the residents came “from all parts of the country--California to New York.  There are a few young men living in the house, and romance flourishes.”  Despite the hint of scandal in the photo above, Bubley’s view of the boarding house was benign.  In factl, her sister Enid met her husband there.  (Bonnie Yochelson and Tracy A. Schmid, Ester Bubley:  On Assignment.)

The boarding house series worked its magic.  Stryker promoted Bubley to field photographer soon after seeing them.

Esther Bubley.  Washington, D.C.  Girl sitting alone in the Sea Grill, a bar and restaurant waiting for a pickup.  April 1943.  Bubley’s notes quote the woman as saying:  "I come in here pretty often, sometimes alone, mostly with another girl, we drink beer, and talk, and of course we keep our eyes open--you'd be surprised at how often nice, lonesome soldiers ask Sue, the waitress, to introduce them to us".

Jacqueline Ellis is among the people who have noted the “Hopperesque visual language” of the Sea Grill photo.  (See, Jacqueline Ellis, Silent Witness.)  In saying that, she’s not referring to the light or the clarity of the photo, which are entirely alien to Hopper's paintings.  She’s pointing to the pensiveness, loneliness, and whiff of regret that we can see in the woman’s face.  Like Hopper’s women, Bubley’s woman waits.

Esther Bubley.  Washington, D.C.  April 1943.  Bubley’s notes:  "Girl who has picked up two soldiers since coming into the Sea Grill alone. They are drinking beer and exchanging life histories."

But unlike Hopper’s women, Bubley’s young woman didn’t wait long, at least not on this night in April 1943.

With the exception of “A Radio for Company,” the image at the top of the page, “erotic” is the wrong word for most of these images.  They do, however, deal forthrightly with sexuality.  More so than any other FSA/OWI photographer, Bubley explored wartime changes in the social geography of sex.  Her gaze was direct, and, with a few exceptions, she neither scolded nor romanticized her subjects.

In Let Us Now Praise Famous Women, Andrea Fisher wrote the tremendous differences between Bubley’s urban women in wartime America and the rural and small town women of the FSA’s Depression-era photography:  “In their self-conscious sensuality, [Bubley’s] women are far afield from the destitute migrant mothers of the 1930's.”  Indeed they were.  The Depression was over and the nation was at war.  New opportunities allowed women (and men) to create new selves and new ways of being.  History--the nation’s, the world’s, and her own--had put Bubley in the perfect position to document the changes.

Esther Bubley.  Washington, D.C.  A picture-taking machine in the lobby at the United Nations service center.  January 1943.

To judge from this photograph, the changing landscape of sexuality and gender roles, during WWII, was no easier for men to navigate than for women.

Gordon Parks.  Portrait of Esther Bubley, c. 1943.

Memorial Day, 2009: Gordon Parks, Ella Watson, and My Dad

Memorial Day is a time for remembering what we owe to those who are no longer with us. (Yes, it’s also a time for picnics, backyard BBQs, and sleeping late. But it should be more than that.) I’ve been thinking about my father, Lt. Col. John E. Mason, Sr., who served in the United States Army during World War II and the Korean War. He grew up poor, on farm in southside Virginia, put himself through high school and college, and became part of the Army’s first sizeable contingent of African-American officers. He was, that is, one of the men who blazed the trail later followed by the likes of Colin Powell. My father, who had a heck of a life, later became an Episcopal priest at a time when black Episcopal clergymen were few and far between.

I’ve also been thinking about another trailblazer, Gordon Parks, and Ella Watson, another of the men and women whose sacrifices made this country (and the world) a better place. That’s Watson in the photo below; Parks made it in 1942.

Ella Watson, 1942.  Photo by Gordon Parks.

Gordon Parks rose from poverty to become one of the most important photojournalists and fashion photographers of the twentieth century. He opened doors through which many African-American photographers later passed. Ella Watson was a cleaning woman in a federal office building, in Washington, DC, whose wages supported a household that included grandchildren and an adopted daughter and helped support the church to which she was so devoted.

We would never have heard of Ella Watson, if Parks hadn’t made that photo. He had come to DC to work as a photographer for the Farm Security Administration [FSA]. Roy Stryker, who headed the photographic section, wasn’t happy about hiring a black photographer, but, after some prodding, did it anyway. To his credit, it was Stryker who suggested that Parks talk to Watson, when he expressed his desire to find a way to explore racial discrimination visually. The result was a series of photographs that looked at Watson’s life, at work and at home. She emerges, in those photos, as someone whose memory I’d like to honor. You can find Parks’s photos of Watson and read more about them on the Library of Congress’s FSA photographs website.

I’d also like to remember my friend Dan Hallabrin. I learned today that he died in Spain last week. Thirty years ago, he was one of my favorite bartenders (we worked together in a Cincinnati restaurant). He later became a middle school and high school teacher in Cincinnati and Spain. Everybody who knew him--colleagues and students alike--will tell you that he was one of the most inspiring teachers that they ever encountered. He’ll be sorely missed.