Gordon Parks quotes

Gordon Parks was an influential American photographer, filmmaker, and writer, celebrated for his poignant images documenting social injustices and African-American life. His work brought powerful attention to issues of race, poverty, and civil rights in the United States. He became the first African-American to direct a major Hollywood film and inspired generations of artists and activists. Here are 22 of his quotes:

The photographer begins to feel big and bloated and so big he can't walk through one of these doors because he gets a good byline; he gets notices all over the world and so forth; but they're really - the important people are the people he photographs.

Gordon Parks

Washington, D.C. in 1942 was not the easiest place in the world for a Negro to get along.

Gordon Parks

But I was very disappointed that I didn't get a chance to go overseas with that group, might not have gotten back but I wanted very much to go because there's not much of a record of the exploits of the first Negro fighter group.

Gordon Parks

The guy who takes a chance, who walks the line between the known and unknown, who is unafraid of failure, will succeed.

Gordon Parks

Enthusiasm is the electricity of life. How do you get it? You act enthusiastic until you make it a habit.

Gordon Parks

I suffered evils, but without allowing them to rob me of the freedom to expand.

Gordon Parks

I'd become sort of involved in things that were happening to people. No matter what color they be, whether they be Indians, or Negroes, the poor white person or anyone who was I thought more or less getting a bad shake.

Gordon Parks

You know, the camera is not meant just to show misery.

Gordon Parks

I think maybe the rural influence in my life helped me in a sense, of knowing how to get close to people and talk to them and get my work done.

Gordon Parks

But I do feel a little teeny right now that I'm just about ready to start, and winter is entering. Half past autumn has arrived.

Gordon Parks

So I went to Chicago in 1940, I think, '41, and the photographs that I made there, aside from fashion, were things that I was trying to express in a social conscious way.

Gordon Parks

And I think that after nearly 85 years upon this planet that I have a right after working so hard at showing the desolation and the poverty, to show something beautiful for somebody as well.

Gordon Parks

There's another horizon out there, one more horizon that you have to make for yourself and let other people discover it, and someone else will take it further on, you know.

Gordon Parks

At first I wasn't sure that I had the talent, but I did know I had a fear of failure, and that fear compelled me to fight off anything that might abet it.

Gordon Parks

And now, I feel at 85, I really feel that I'm just ready to start.

Gordon Parks

I was there less than a year before I was assigned to the Paris bureau. I spent two years there and, in fact, before I even went on the staff I was sent to Europe to do assignments which they wouldn't normally do for a young photographer just starting out.

Gordon Parks

People in millenniums ahead will know what we were like in the 1930's and the thing that, the important major things that shaped our history at that time. This is as important for historic reasons as any other.

Gordon Parks

I've been with Life now for seventeen years and I have written several articles for them and will be doing more writing and do at least two assignments a year besides my writing.

Gordon Parks

No wonder you get a Rapp Brown, no wonder you get a Le Roi Jones, no wonder you get a Stokely Carmichael. But you can't really compare these kids with me, because my time was beyond their time. Black studies, the identification with Africa emerging, has instilled a lot of pride in black kids. But the black kids on the campuses are suddenly asking for separate classes and segregated dormitories. I've said to them, ‘Black people have fought and died that you might be here. These white kids will be the next leaders, and will reshape your lives for the next 200 years unless you get in the classrooms with them and help'.

Gordon Parks