Saying he wanted all his work under one roof he could respect, photographer, filmmaker, composer and author Gordon Parks donated his personal archives to the Library of Congress during a news conference in the Great Hall on July 7.
In turn, Dr. Billington said Mr. Parks honored the American people by selecting the Library of Congress as the repository for his records.
"In accepting this gift ... we at the Library celebrate his achievement and his endurance. We believe, from our vantage point in the closing of the 20th century, that his words, his music, his films and his art matter, and will continue to matter," Dr. Billington said.
In donating his work, which will be transferred to the Library in the coming months, Mr. Parks continued a longstanding affiliation with the Library, one that began in the 1940s with the photographs he produced for the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information, now in the Library's collections. The Music Division also has his published and unpublished scores, and the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division has several of his films and television productions.
But there are still some 20,000 pages of manuscripts, 1,000 photographic prints, 12,000 negatives, hundreds of recordings and musical notations in his possession.
Mr. Parks said, "This is a long way from 1942, when I arrived here to work for the Farm Security Adminstration. ... I used to look at this big building and say, 'Wow, what a place,' and to come from a place like Fort Scott, Kan., where there are about 500 people living there, this was something."
Mr. Parks was born in 1912, the youngest of 15 children. He left home at an early age after the death of his mother and supported himself with odd jobs, working as a bus boy, piano player and dining car attendant on the railroad. During a layover in Seattle, he bought a camera for $7.50 from a pawnshop. He didn't even know how to load it. But he did know how to use it. His very first roll of pictures attracted the attention of the processing manager at Kodak, so the story goes, who gave Mr. Parks his first exhibit in the window gallery of the store. It was the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship with the camera.
"Photography allowed me the chance to go into writing, painting or whatever," Mr. Parks said. "It afforded me the time, and I will be forever thankful for it."
Mr. Parks's first professional picture was taken for the Farm Security Administration in 1942. During an interview with National Public Radio, he said that the director of the project, Roy Stryker, sent him to downtown Washington for a firsthand look at the way blacks were treated. Mr. Parks had not been exposed to such blatant racism before. He returned with his eyes opened.
Stryker asked him what he was going to do about it. When Mr. Parks replied that he didn't know, Stryker said, "What did you bring the camera down here for?" He told Mr. Parks to talk to some people about what he had seen and how it affected their lives. There was a woman cleaning in one of the government offices by the name of Ella Watson. She told Mr. Parks about her husband being lynched and he posed her in front of an American flag, with a broom in one hand and a mop in the other. With heavy irony, Mr. Parks called the shot "American Gothic." It became a classic.
After his work for the federal government, Mr. Parks went on assignment for Life magazine, creating photo essays with a social message, such as a series on Harlem gang members and the feature on Flavio, a Brazilian child from the slums. Flavio's story so moved readers that Mr. Parks was able to raise enough money to bring the child to the United States.
While at Life, Mr. Parks also shot high fashion in Paris, where he gained a versatility he later used on assignments for both Glamour and Vogue.
In 1969 his first feature-length film, "The Learning Tree," was released. He was the writer, director and cameraman. When the Librarian of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 1989, Mr. Parks said it was "one of the biggest achievements of my life."
"The Learning Tree," a personal coming-of-age film set in Kansas, was followed by the commercially successful "Shaft" (1971) and "Shaft's Big Score" (1972). The success of these movies was instrumental in opening the doors for other black filmmakers. They also gave Mr. Parks the financial independence he needed to explore other art forms, such as musical composition and ballet. In 1989 he filmed "Martin," a ballet he created in memory of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
With more than 15 books in print, at the age of 82, Mr. Parks continues to be prolific. Some of his most recent work can be seen in Arias in Silence (Little Brown, 1994), in which he has combined photographic still-life images with his watercolor paintings accompanied by his poems.
"The pictures that have most persistently confronted my camera have been those of crime, racism and poverty," said Mr. Parks. "Arias in Silence is a rummaging through my imagination."
He is currently working on a second volume of color abstracts that combine photography and painting. In 1997 the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington plans to offer the first major retrospective of all aspects of his career.
"I am very happy about the decision I made to donate my collection to the Library of Congress," he said. "My family and close friends are happy." He also expressed particular gratitude to Pat Willard, an old friend and consultant in jazz to Library, who "kicked me in the shins to come this way."
