Gordon Parks (1912-2006)

Parks was the first African American photographer on the staff of Life magazine, and later helped found Essence. He also was the first Black writer and director of a studio film, and his second movie,Shaft, helping to shape the blaxploitation era in the ’70s. Parks famously told Life in 1999: “I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera.”