[American Studies] on Gordon Parks [American Gothic]

            The study of the African-American and the study of America are one in the same; a people struggling to make a home in a hostile condition made hostile by their very angst.

            If a people are rendered invisible, it is a twofold-fault; the oppressor wielding intolerance and the oppressed for allowing what is being wielded to continuously hit target at will. The oppressor knows how to oppress, as once upon at time, they were the oppressed and possess the memory and methodology of how their dethroned oppressors were so effective until their sackings; the oppressed knows only the blindness that comes from the swollen, blackening eyes were clouts cease to land, because the oppressed knows from their former oppressors the mistakes those oppressors made which allowed them to break free; they allowed them to see, to gather and obtain visions, they allowed them to dream.

            History never repeats itself, every event in history, whilst having all the seemings of similarities, are bred by different circumstances and different events. A woman holds a broom in one hand and a mop in the other, a background of the American Flag. Her black skin represents the oppressed, one of the few of the American lands, her gender implies she must also mind men of all races, lest she fall victim to an opposing gender only content with her subjugation, the mop and broom, cleaning tools, are the tools used to sweep injustice under the rug of an American Ideal gone awry, which we see in the background, fifty stars, fifty states, fifty separate tales of horror and heinous forging of an American Empire.

Dontrell Lovet't

[The Rise & Revolt] on Gordon Park's [I Am You]

            In an effort to separate ourselves from the most undesirable penalties or events, we vilify; it’s an uncanny, unfortunate defense mechanism but humans, humanity, has proven it is willing to do whatever it takes to survive, even if that survival determines the demise of another species, a dictated lesser species.

            In Gordon Park’s [I am You], an African-American man emerges from a man-hole in the ground. The camera captures this emergence at an equivalent level as would be someone willing to see eye to eye, wanting to see this man rising. Below our feet, there is another world, where all things unwanted are discarded and flow with the collective rest into the oblivion of those walking above short-term memories.

            But what happens when someone discarded refused to be discarded, beyond that, when the one refusing to be discarded, in their very refusal, inspire the rest to denounce their disenfranchisement? Parks photographs the beginning of a revolution, how it takes one of many various forms, and what appears to us a man just emerging from a pot hole, its representation for the capitalist, adrift in their greed, fearing a revolt, fearing a resurrection from the once silenced.