Gordon Parks: Fashion Photographer

In 1940, at the age of 28, Gordon Parks walked into Frank Murphy's fashion department store in St. Paul, Minnesota. A self-taught photographer with no formal experience in fashion work, he boldly offered his services to photograph models wearing the store's fashions.

Luckily, this one portrait, seen here, was enough to showcase his potential and he was given another chance - eventually leading him to shoot all of the department store's fashions, in addition to local media outlets.

His background in both fashion and documentary photography would set him apart and prove to make him an asset at Life, making his acclaimed career at the magazine possible. Working with fashion helped to inform Parks' overall style as a photographer. 

While he is today best known for his artful and intimate portraits of race relations, poverty, civil rights, and urban life, he is still heralded as a leading figure in mid-twentieth century fashion photography.

They would say, ‘Gordon, if you like, I don’t personally like it, but Alex says you do it your way.’ I would say ‘Thank you darling, but let’s try it your way, too.’ And I would try it their way, and Alex would pick mine. I tried to learn what good taste was.”

In 1949, as Gordon Parks was just beginning his time at LIFE, he was sent to Paris in order to cover the French collections during fashion week. 

It was not long after this trip that Parks was given the opportunity every photographer at LIFE yearned for - to work out of their Paris headquarters. 

The two years Parks spent living in Paris afforded him the chance to photograph the latest fashions in a leading capital of the fashion world - as well as acting as LIFE's window into post-war Europe. 

Contrary to many other fashion photographers of the time who did most of their shoots in a studio - Parks made use of the natural scenery he found himself in, preferring to shoot outside whenever possible.