Step 7:  Two Contradictory Interpretations of Parks' Photograph "American Gothic"

Take one more look at the photograph we began with: 

Below are two contradictory interpretations of the image from two different respectable and credible sources.  

A:  History/Contexts for Gordon Park’s Photograph “American Gothic”

  "American Gothic," considered to be Parks's signature image, was taken in Washington, D.C., in 1942, during the photographer's fellowship with the Farm Security Administration, a government agency set up by President Roosevelt to aid farmers in despair. "It's the first professional image I ever made," Parks says, "created on my first day in Washington." Roy Stryker, who led the FSA's very best documentary photographers—Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Carl Mydans, etc.—told Parks to go out and get acquainted with the city. Parks was amazed by the amount of bigotry and discrimination he encountered on his very first day. "White restaurants made me enter through the back door, white theaters wouldn't even let me in the door, and as the day went on things just went from bad to worse." Stryker told Parks to go talk with some older black people who had lived their entire lives in Washington and see how they had coped. "That's how I met Ella," Parks explains.

Ella Watson was a black charwoman who mopped floors in the FSA building. Parks asked her about her life, which she divulged as having been full of misery, bigotry and despair. Parks's simple question, "Would you let me photograph you?" and Ella's affirmative response, led to the photographer's most recognizable image of all time. "Two days later Stryker saw the image and told me I'd gotten the right idea but was going to get all the FSA photogs fired, that my image of Ella was 'an indictment of America.' I thought the image had been killed but one day there it was, on the front page of The Washington Post ." At the time, Parks couldn't have realized that the image would go on to become the symbol of the pre-civil rights era's treatment of minorities.

  Source:  Info on Parks and  and his image from  http://www.pdn-pix.com/legends/parks/intro_set.shtml  

B:  History/Contexts for Gordon Park’s Photograph “American Gothic”

Gordon Parks, American Gothic

The photograph portrays a man wearing a dress and holding a broom, standing in front of an American flag.  The man’s stance and blank expression recall American Gothic, the famous painting by Grant Wood of a man and woman standing in front of their simple house with a Gothic-style window. The painting has come to symbolize certain American values and styles and has been reproduced and parodied countless times.

In this particular parody one can read the American flag as a replacement for the house, which has come to symbolize American style or value.   The man can be seen as a fusion of the man and woman in the original painting; he may connote a shifting sense of gender divisions in this country.  Although Wood’s painting signified American style, it also signified America’s blend of conformity and freedom  Parks’s photograph takes this meaning to an extreme by dressing a man in woman’s clothing (an expression of freedom), but the clothes are fairly conservative and traditionally feminine (an expression of conformity).

Source:  Teaching Seeing and Writing, by Anne Kress and Suellyn Winkle.  Bedford St. Martins Press, 2000,  pp. 204-5.

What are the key contradictions in the two readings?

Which interpretation do you believe is the most convincing or credible?  Why?

Which one is "true" or "right"?  Why?

What could you do to try to resolve the contradictions between the two?

Forward to Step 8