The work of an extraordinary artist fuels the HBO documentary A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks. Gordon Parks was a multi-hyphenate before his time: an author, director, composer, photographer and the first editorial director of Essence Magazine. A Choice of Weapons, also the title of his 1966 autobiography, delves primarily into his photography, tracing his development, techniques, and lasting influence on the industry.
Rather than guess at Parks’ intentions, the film, directed by frequent PBS contributor John Maggio, uses archival interviews with the artist as a means to understand his approach. Parks explains his motivations and worldview in his own words. “I might have turned eventually to the gun or the knife as a weapon to survive but by then I had chosen the camera,” Parks says in a voiceover. “Photography was a way in which I could express my own feelings about racism in America, about the downtrodden, and somehow or another I might transcend my own experience.”
The most rewarding aspect of this documentary is seeing the breadth of Parks’ photographs and learning details behind their creation. For his renowned 1942 “American Gothic” portrait of Farm Security Administration janitor Ella Watson, Parks, who was on a fellowship with the agency, spent weeks with his subject at her work and home. The film cites this as a turning point for Parks, who decided that the only way of capturing the humanity of his subjects was to get to know them. For his 1948 Harlem Gang Leader series in Life magazine, Parks spent so much time with gang leader Red Jackson prior to shooting a single frame that an impatient Jackson questioned whether Parks was going to take any photos at all. For Parks, it was imperative to gain the respect of his subjects in order to inhabit their spaces.
This credo gave Parks the ability to capture worlds outside of mainstream ‘50s and ‘60s media as well as high society. He “represented crime as an ambiguity” in 1957’s The Atmosphere of Crime series; captured Benedictine Monks in 1955 and embedded himself with Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam for 1963’s Black Muslims series. He collaborated with author Ralph Ellison on 1952’s A Man Becomes Invisible, in which his photographs represented scenes from Ellison’s Invisible Man novel. A Choice of Weapons also features images of Parks’s fur-and-frock filled fashion and society photography, such as 1956’s New York Collections series and portraits from his stint at Life magazine’s Paris bureau.
Parks’ confidence and swagger is evident throughout A Choice of Weapons. Early in the film, Parks tells a BBC interviewer, “The term ‘living in a white man’s world’ is one I don’t particularly like. A lot of Negros use it and a lot of whites use it. But I consider this my world.” A Choice of Weapons is conspicuously absent of details about Parks’s private life. Childhood challenges of growing up in segregated Kansas are addressed, but there is no mention of wives, weddings, or children save for the appearance of ex-wife Genevieve Young and daughter Leslie Campbell Parks (Parks was married three times and had four children). It’s inferred that he and socialite Gloria Vanderbilt were lovers—Vanderbilt’s son, Anderson Cooper, says Parks spent many intimate weekends with his mother—but there is no outright confirmation of the relationship. The closest the film comes to hinting at Parks’ personal life is testimonial opining that the leather-clad, ladies man, titular character of 1971’s Shaft was likely modeled after the photographer, who directed the picture and wrote the score for the sequel, Shaft’s Big Score.
In addition to Parks’s work, the stories of young photographers Devin Allen, La Toya Ruby Frazier, and Jamel Shabazz are woven throughout A Choice of Weapons. The photographers describe how they carry on Parks’s legacy in their own work. Allen’s image of a man running from baton-wielding Baltimore police during Freddie Gray protests landed a Time magazine cover in 2015. Allen says that moment helped him understand the influence that his camera wields: “For the first time I understood what Gordon was talking about, that the camera is a real weapon. I realize how powerful I am with a camera in my hand.”
The documentary is otherwise straight-forward in structure. A who’s who of Black creatives and thought leaders—Spike Lee, Ava DuVernay, The New Yorker’s Jelani Cobb, Ford Foundation president Darren Walker—attest to Parks’ singular stature in the arts and society. Art institution leaders speak to the more technical aspects of Parks’ photography, including the fact that he taught himself photography techniques by reading camera manuals.
For those unfamiliar with Parks exhaustive body of work, A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks is an eye-opening survey of one of the country’s foremost photographers of the 20th century. For those who’ve previously seen his images, it gives context to the photographs and highlights his many firsts: Life’s first Black staff photographer and one of the first Black Americans to direct a major Hollywood film, 1969’s The Learning Tree, based on his semi-autobiographical novel of the same name. Parks credited these accomplishments to a lesson learned early in life: “A Negro builds up a double defense. When you’re a kid you have to prepare to be able to do much more than a white boy so that if the time comes when your talent is pitted against a white man, you will get the nod because they can’t afford to lose you.”
A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks is now streaming on HBO.