Gloucester Fishing

1942, printed later · Photograph

Oplysninger

c. 1940 (aged 28)
Buys his first camera and teaches himself to shoot
Struck by magazine photographs of migrant workers, at twenty-eight he buys a Voigtländer Brillant for $12.50 at a Seattle pawnshop and teaches himself photography. The clerks who develop his first roll of film applaud his work and urge him to seek a fashion assignment at Frank Murphy’s women’s clothing store in St. Paul.
1940
Moves to Chicago on Marva Louis’s advice
His photographs for the St. Paul store catch the eye of Marva Louis, wife of heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis, who encourages Parks and his wife Sally Alvis to move to Chicago. There he opens a portrait business and specialises in photographs of society women.
1940
Daughter born: Toni Parks
1941
Exhibition of photographs of Chicago’s Black ghetto
While chronicling the South Side Black ghetto of Chicago, he sees an exhibition of these photographs win him a photography fellowship with the Farm Security Administration (FSA); other accounts link his invitation to the FSA to the Rosenwald Fellowship of 1942.
1942
Receives the Rosenwald Fellowship
The Julius Rosenwald Fellowship, $200 a month with the choice of employer, rewards his work in Chicago, especially his capturing of the myriad experiences of African Americans across the city. It contributes to his being asked to join the FSA, which under Roy Stryker was chronicling the nation’s social conditions.