Smile For The Camera

In 1970, the year he left Life, Parks wrote, in an essay on creativity, “I am often asked why I do so many different things,” And he explained:

I used to wonder about this myself, and for a long time I passed it off as a sort of professional restlessness. But, in retrospect, I know that it was a desperate search for security within a society that held me inferior simply because I was black. It was a constant inner rebellion against failure. I was a poor black boy who wanted to be somebody. So I created desires until I was drowning neck deep in them, before I would attempt to swim my way out…In my fright, I set up all sorts of hypothetical tragedies for myself, then I would contemplate an alternative to offset whatever tragedy I felt might strike… [If] I lost my legs in an accident… I would play music or perhaps compose for a living…if i lost my sight…I could learn Braille and somehow survive by writing… So with all the tragic possibilities considered, and all the alternatives accounted for, I could push on with a little less fear. “Finally,” he says of this mindset, “it means that I was forced to rid myself of the insecurities that the lack of education brought me.”“