Walking with Ella Watson: Photography, Interiority, and the Spiritual Church Movement in the Work of Gordon Parks

IF 0.4 4区历史学 Q1 HISTORY

SOUTHERN CULTURES Pub Date : 2022-06-01 DOI:10.1353/scu.2022.0012

Jovonna Jones

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Abstract:Gordon Parks made a series of photographs for the Farm Security Administration in 1942. Parks intended to document the impact of racial bigotry on Black communities in Washington D.C., and found a resilient subject in Ella Watson, a Black woman who cleaned federal offices. This moment produced the iconic "American Gothic" portrait Parks made of Watson in the building that evening. But Watson also brought Parks to other critical spaces in her life, including her home altar and her worship community at the St. Martin's Spiritual Center. This essay meditates on the images of Watson's religious life. Walking with Watson into the sanctuary and documenting spiritualists' dynamic forms of worship helped Parks to focus his lens on the fullness of Black living beyond the burdens of systemic racism. The photographs help us to visualize how sacred liberatory spirit emerges in solitude and in collectivity, moving both within and beyond the walls of the sanctuary.

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与艾拉·沃森同行：戈登·帕克斯作品中的摄影、室内与精神教会运动

摘要：戈登·帕克斯于1942年为农场安全管理局拍摄了一系列照片。帕克斯打算记录种族偏见对华盛顿特区黑人社区的影响，并在艾拉·沃森（Ella Watson）身上找到了一个有韧性的主题，她是一名清洁联邦办公室的黑人女性。这一刻产生了标志性的“美国哥特式”肖像帕克斯的沃森在当晚的建筑。但沃森也把帕克斯带到了她生活中的其他关键空间，包括她的家庭祭坛和她在圣马丁精神中心的崇拜社区。本文对华生宗教生活的意象进行了思考。与沃森一起走进避难所，记录灵媒主义者动态的崇拜形式，帮助帕克斯将镜头对准了黑人在系统性种族主义负担之外的充实生活。这些照片帮助我们想象神圣的解放精神是如何在孤独和集体中出现的，在避难所的墙壁内外移动。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

SOUTHERN CULTURES HISTORY-

CiteScore

0.30

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： In the foreword to the first issue of the The Southern Literary Journal, published in November 1968, founding editors Louis D. Rubin, Jr. and C. Hugh Holman outlined the journal"s objectives: "To study the significant body of southern writing, to try to understand its relationship to the South, to attempt through it to understand an interesting and often vexing region of the American Union, and to do this, as far as possible, with good humor, critical tact, and objectivity--these are the perhaps impossible goals to which The Southern Literary Journal is committed." Since then The Southern Literary Journal has published hundreds of essays by scholars of southern literature examining the works of southern writers and the ongoing development of southern culture.