'Life' Photographer And 'Shaft' Director Broke Color Barriers

The discrimination that he experienced in the city left him raw. During this period, he took what became one of his signature photographs, a picture of Ella Watson, a cleaning woman who worked in the agency's building. He positioned Watson in front of an American flag, a broom in one hand and a mop in the other. He named the picture "American Gothic, Washington, D.C." The photograph captured his style of focusing on one particular person to illustrate a broad social theme.

"I never allowed the fact that I experienced bigotry and discrimination to step in the way of doing what I have to do," he once said. "I don't understand why other people let that destroy them."

Parks later went on to Life magazine, where from 1948 to 1968 he covered segregation, crime and other issues. His 1961 photograph of a poor Brazilian boy named Flavio da Silva brought in enough donations to help the family build a house.

St. Clair Bourne, who directed a 2000 HBO documentary on Parks's life, was a young photographer when he met Parks while covering a civil rights march. He was one of many black filmmakers and photographers who respected Parks for his historical role.

"He educated white people about the black experience, and as an artist he used his skills to do that," Bourne said in a 2000 article in the New York Times. "Today, it would be harder: the lines, political and cultural, have hardened. But when Gordon came along, there was a great deal of ignorance about the real experience of black people."

A self-taught pianist, Parks composed Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1953) and Tree Symphony (1967). In 1989, he composed and choreographed "Martin," a ballet dedicated to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

His autobiographies were "A Choice of Weapons" (1966), "To Smile in Autumn" (1979), and "Voices in the Mirror" (1990). His poetry anthologies include "A Poet and His Camera" (1968), "Arias of Silence" (1994) and "Glimpses Toward Infinity" (1996).

In 1998, Parks donated 227 pieces of his work to the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

He was married and divorced three times. Survivors include three children.

Freedom, Parks said, was the theme of all of his work: "Not allowing anyone to set boundaries, cutting loose the imagination and then making the new horizons."