Just Wanted to Share – February 21, 2024

Parks was the first African American photographer on the staff of Life magazine, and later helped found Essence. He also was the first Black writer and director of a studio film, and his second movie, Shaft, helping to shape the blaxploitation era in the ’70s. Parks famously told Life in 1999: “I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera.”