Gordon Parks, who became the first black staff photographer at Life magazine in the late 1940s and broke more ground in Hollywood two decades later as the first black to direct a major studio film, "The Learning Tree," followed by the landmark black private-eye crime thriller "Shaft," has died. He was 93.
Parks, who also carved out niches as a novelist, memoirist, poet and composer, died Tuesday in New York, his nephew Charles Parks told the Associated Press.
Although his films widened Parks' fame, it was as a photographer and social documentarian that he first made his mark as an artist and achieved his greatest acclaim.
As a staff photographer at Life for more than two decades, Parks shot acclaimed photo essays on segregation in the Deep South, the slums of Rio de Janeiro and the Black Muslims. He also shot intimate portraits of celebrities, ranging from Muhammad Ali to Barbra Streisand.
His photo essay "Freedom's Fearful Foe: Poverty" in a 1961 issue of Life examined the Da Silvas, an impoverished Rio de Janeiro couple whose young son, Flavio, was dying of bronchial asthma and malnutrition. The public responded with donations and offers of adoption.
Parks, who kept in touch with his young subject, wrote and directed a 1964 documentary on the boy as well as writing the award-winning 1978 biography "Flavio."
Parks had a second successful career as an author, beginning in the late 1940s with two instructional photography manuals.
"The Learning Tree," Parks' semi-autobiographical novel about a smart and sensitive 15-year-old boy who experiences racism, love and loss in a Kansas town in the 1920s, became a 1963 bestseller.
With support from actor-filmmaker John Cassavetes, Parks was hired by Warner Bros.' Seven Arts Studio to write, direct, score and executive-produce the 1969 screen version of "The Learning Tree." In 1989, the film was among the first 25 films honored by the U.S. Library of Congress to be preserved in the National Film Registry.
Parks produced and directed his second film, "Shaft," the 1971 action thriller that gave America its first black private eye hero, who became a role model for many young men. Starring Richard Roundtree as super-cool John Shaft and featuring Isaac Hayes' Oscar-winning theme song, "Shaft" was a box-office hit that crossed racial lines.
Parks made three more feature films: "Shaft's Big Score" (1972), "The Super Cops" (1974) and "Leadbelly," a 1976 musical biography of legendary folk singer Huddie Ledbetter. In 1984, he directed the TV movie "Solomon Northup's Odyssey" about a free black man who is sold into slavery.
Parks received numerous honors over the years, including the National Medal of Arts from President Ronald Reagan.
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