Eyes with Winged Thoughts
Poems and Photographs
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In Eyes with Winged Thoughts, the forty-four photographs and fifty-eight poems, reflecting on his long and extraordinary life, offer a rare glimpse of his thoughts and feelings about everything from romantic love to the Iraq war and the passing of Pope John Paul II.
He has done it all. Gordon Parks's life was an astonishing litany of firsts: in the 1940s he was the first African American photographer to work for the Farm Security Administration and for Vogue and Life magazines; in the 1960s he would become the first African American director of a major motion picture. A dominating figure in contemporary American culture, he was an artist of uncompromising vision and creativity.
In 2002 Parks received the Jackie Robinson Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award and was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame, just a few in a series of honors that began when he received a prestigious Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1941 and which now includes an Emmy, a National Medal of the Arts, and over fifty honorary doctorates. In his nineties, he revealed the luminous photographs on display in Eyes with Winged Thoughts and the poems—some meditative and lyrical, some raw with emotion about the war in Iraq and the tragedy of the tsunami—show that he is still a true American Renaissance man.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At 90, Parks can look back on his life with considerable pride. He sought and won acclaim as a photographer, film director, composer, author and poet. An African-American who challenged and recorded the horrors of bigotry, Parks, a longtime staffer of Life magazine, has led a remarkable life and his memoir reads like a journey through most of 20th-century America. From his Kansas youth to his assignments shooting everything from Paris fashions to Malcolm X, Parks treats readers to an insider look at history, war and politics. En route, we learn of his struggles, including three failed marriages. He doesn't spare himself, yet renders personal details with gentlemanly restraint. Above all, his deep commitment to work, for Vogue, Life and Hollywood, is clear. Whether telling of dodging death threats as a black photojournalist documenting the civil rights struggle in the 1960s, directing Shaft or producing moving photo essays on Harlem families, Parks's eye for irony never falters. Describing himself as "a hopeless romantic with a sense of adventure," Parks is rightfully harsh in his condemnation of racism but grateful to supportive whites who supplied critical career breaks. This work is a fitting tribute to a driven man whose life story is as absorbing as his work.
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