Self-Portrait

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.

c. 1942

Stryker calls the picture an indictment of America

Seeing the photograph, Stryker says it is an indictment of America that could get all of his photographers fired, and urges Parks to keep working with Watson, which leads to a series of pictures of her daily life. Parks later says his first image was overdone and not subtle.