American Gothic (Ella Watson)

In 1941 Gordon Parks was awarded a fellowship to work with Roy Stryker, director of the arts program for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in Washington, D.C—a New Deal institution begun during the Depression to document and combat rural poverty. While working there, Parks met Ella Watson, a cleaning woman at the FSA.

In this image Parks positioned Mrs. Watson in front of an American flag. He named the photograph “American Gothic,” a deliberate reference to Grant Wood’s famous painting of the same title from 1930 (now in the Art Institute of Chicago). In this version of American Gothic, the protagonist is an urban black worker who is portrayed not with a pitchfork, but with a mop and broom, a quiet but monumental laborer. Photographed in 1942 at the height of World War II, the bold image calls ironic attention to the segregation and racism that Parks, Watson, and other African Americans encountered daily in the nation’s capital.