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By the time GORDON PARKS died last week at 93 in his New York City home, he had made his way through a succession of fields--photography, literature, film--and left enduring work in every one. The novelist who wrote The Learning Tree also composed concertos; the poet also directed Shaft. But it's as a photographer that Parks will be remembered most. Especially at LIFE, where, as the first African American on its photo staff, he could shoot a Brazilian slum or a Paris fashion show with the same sure mastery. Above all, he made countless pictures of African-American life at a time when white racism was the rule--sometimes the law--around the country.
The son of a Kansas tenant farmer, Parks was working as a railway-car waiter in the 1930s when he picked up a magazine left by a passenger and had his first look at images of the Depression-era U.S. made by Dorothea Lange and other Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographers. Within a few years, he had bought a camera and started making portraits. By 1942 he was in Washington as an FSA photographer. On his first day there, Parks was refused service at a clothing store, theater and restaurant because he was black. He channeled his anger into his first famous photograph, made that day. American Gothic, right, is a portrait of a black cleaning woman in front of an American flag, her solemnity saying worlds about the limits that she--and he--met every day. Parks' art--in all media--is the work of a man who blew away those limits all his life.