VAULT: Gordon Parks Goes to Washington in 1942 (2001)
National Visionary Leadership Project
01.13.2019For the next video in our series Great Art You Can’t See Right Now Because of the Chuckleheads In Washington, we’re sharing with you another clip from the National Visionary Leadership Project’s remarkable 2001 interview with legendary photographer Gordon Parks. Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940–1950 is now at the National Gallery of Art, through February 18, 2019, but you can’t see it owing to the government shutdown.
In this remarkable short clip, Parks recounts (with not a small amount of irony added right now) his first visit to Washington DC in 1942. As an assignment, Roy Stryker of the FSA asks him to go (without his camera) to a department store and buy a coat, then to buy lunch – and is refused service in his attempts at both activities.