‘American Gothic’ is a portrait of a black charwoman taken in 1942 by African American photojournalist, Gordon Parks, which came to be one of his most famous images. Taken in the heart of America, a government building in Washington D.C., the image came to represent the poor treatment of African Americans at that time. The U.S. was nearing the end of the Great Depression, but conditions for black citizens would take years to start improving. Parks’ photograph, which was published on the front page of The Washington Post, was a powerful condemnation of the treatment of African Americans that dared to say what others wouldn’t. I will analyse the photo and look at what Parks was trying to tell us about the inequality that was ever-present in 1940s America.
In 1942 Gordon Parks started work as a photojournalist in Washington D.C. for the Farm Security Administration’s (FSA) photography division, which was set up to document rural poverty and suffering during the depression. Being a black man in 1940s America, Parks had experienced his fair share of first-hand racism. Parks was always looking for ways to challenge discrimination and reveal the reality of racism to a large audience. “Mr. Parks combined a devotion to documentary realism with a knack for making his own feelings self-evident.” (Grundberg 2006) Driven by his beliefs, he wasn’t afraid to present his own opinions of society, no matter how controversial.
On Parks’ first day working for the FSA, he was shocked by the racism and bigotry he encountered in his nation’s capital. In his own words, “I was refused into theatres because I was black, I couldn’t go into a restaurant and eat”. (Allen and Parks 1978) Angry and impassioned by his experience, he told his boss, Roy Stryker, that he would “show the rest of the world what your great city of Washington, D.C. is really like,”. (Parks, 2005: 64) Parks sought out elder African Americans to see how they had dealt with racism their whole lives and began talking to Ella Watson, a black cleaner working inside the FSA building. She described her past, including the death of her husband, the lynching of her father, and her struggles as a working mother and grandmother. Parks then used a three-flash setup and photographed Watson with a broom and mop by her sides in front of a large American flag hanging from the wall, instructing her to “think about what you just told me”. (Parks, 2005: 66) Parks named the resulting image ‘American Gothic’, a parody of Grant Wood’s classic American painting of the same name depicting a typically-American farm couple.
Many critics claim that the photograph directs Parks’ anger at racial inequality towards America itself, which Parks seems to confirm. In his memoir ‘A Hungry Heart’, he writes that some politicians objected to having ‘American Gothic’ in the FSA files, seeing it as “an indictment of America.” His response to this was, “Some photographs are often accused of telling the truth.” (2005: 66) Even Parks’ own boss was shocked when first viewing the image, remarking that it would get the FSA photographers fired. Danny Moloshok of the University of Michigan has a similar interpretation, suggesting that Parks is presenting the American flag as the face of bigotry, describing how its tall placement in the composition “gives a sense of control over the woman” which “connects to the control of Washington D.C., the centre of America”. (2002)
The shocked reaction to Parks’ image was partly due to the fact that, at the time, not many images dared to be critical of America. Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet wrote that Parks’ critical vision of America in the 1940s “was not yet shared by many scholars, film-makers, journalists, sociologists, or public commentators. This dark, politicized, and critical vision of American society would
Figure 1: Parks 1942. American Gothic become commonplace only in the 1970s and 80s.” (2010: 17)
Other critics believe the image’s parodying of Grant Wood’s painting ‘American Gothic’ influences its reading by American viewers. John Edwin Mason wrote that Wood’s painting was “seen as an image that captured fundamental truths about the American condition.” and that by mimicking it Parks “set out to capture his own essential truths about America.” These are identified as “racial injustice” and “the nation’s chronic failure to live up to the magnificent creed that it and its citizens professed: “…that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.” (2016)
At the time most African Americans only had access to menial labour jobs requiring hard work, long hours and paying next-to-nothing. Parks would certainly have recognised America’s failure to treat all its citizens as equals. Mason may have been suggesting that Ella Watson was a representation of society’s prejudice.
Though Parks was an example of a black man who was actually living the American Dream, he realised that he was somewhat of an anomaly. An unnamed American Sociologist described the hypocrisy in America’s treatment of its black population during WWII: “As the Hitlerites treat the Jews, so they treat the Negroes, in varying degrees of viciousness ranging from the denial of educational opportunities to the denial of employment, from buses that pass Negroes by to jailers who beat and torture Negro prisoners, from the denial of the ballot to the denial of the right to live.” (Birnbaum and Taylor 2000: 318)
The painting ‘American Gothic’ was suggested for use as a patriotic poster for Fortune magazine and became a recognisable staple of American art. Interpretations of Parks’ photograph find that contrasting the archetypal American farmers with a malnourished-looking African American woman raises the question of whether she would actually have been considered an American by many. Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet wrote, “the ambivalence lies in whether the woman is a full-fledged member of American society or its victim.” (2010: 16) Ronald Franklin adds that the image “throws a different light on what it meant to be an American at that time in the nation’s history.” (2012) During WWII African Americans were still denied full citizenship despite the fact that many of them were fighting
Figure 2: Wood 1930. American Gothic for their country. They were not treated as real Americans.
Most people had a stereotypical view of what an American was and looked like, and for many, a black person was not a representation of this. The irony of seeing a sombre, impoverished-looking black charwoman standing before the American flag on the front page of The Washington Post would have been a wake-up call for white audiences. The Akron Art Museum describe how “the composition makes an ironic statement about how distant the American dream was for African Americans leading up to the Civil Rights era”. (Online Collection – Ella Watson, American Gothic, Washington D.C. n.d.) Watson appears as the antithesis of what most would have considered at the time to be “American”, challenging the typical way of thinking.
I have chosen to use semiotic and racial methods for my own analysis. Parks uses various visual signs and symbols which encourage the viewer to interpret the photograph in an intended way. Semiotic analysis allows me to investigate the specifics of these visual elements and explore their connotations, while also looking at what Parks may have been trying to say about 1940s America. Parks created the picture in an angry and impassioned state of mind and may have wanted the viewer to share his emotions. A semiotic reading also allows me to explore the visual parodying of Grant Wood’s painting and what the various connections tell us as the viewer.
In ‘American Gothic’ Parks re-appropriated aspects of popular American culture to tap into large audiences who would then be susceptible to the truths he was posing about America. Parodying one of the most recognised pieces of American art forced American viewers to form an immediate connection to the image as it had a sense of familiarity. The first comparison between the two is Ella Watson’s resemblance, not to the woman, but to the man in Wood’s painting. She shares the same round spectacles, gaunt facial structure and grim expression. While the man is holding a pitchfork (an indication of his manual job as a farmer) Watson is holding a large broom and mop. In addition to being her tools of labour, they could also symbolise the American government’s tools of oppression, used to control black citizens though menial labour jobs. Having two instruments of labour by her sides suggests that work surrounds and encompasses her life. The second person from Wood’s painting has been replaced by another tool, implying that she is being forced to struggle with double the work, or perhaps forced to adopt both male and female roles. She could easily be mistaken for an emaciated man at first glance, possibly conveying her as being stripped of her gender by the oppressive male role society had forced her to assume. The male characterisation is juxtaposed with her feminine dress, with a spotted pattern that mimics the clothing of the woman in the painting. Watson was a maternal figure for her children and grandchildren, as well as being their sole provider.
In Wood’s painting the man is gripping the pitchfork and looking directly at the viewer with a proud expression. This contrasts to the image of Watson, whose gaze falls downwards slightly and to the side, looking solemn and hopeless while deep in thought, ashamed of her reality. Her downward gaze could also be interpreted as submissive. As a black woman cleaning the offices of white government workers, she would not often have engaged in conversation or even made eye contact with them as she would be seen as lower class. The publication of ‘American Gothic’ on the front of the Washington Post will have forced white Americans to look directly at her and recognise her as their victim.
Parks took advantage of the iconic image of the American flag and the powerful connotations of power, freedom, wealth, prosperity and happiness that it evokes. Americans claimed to possess these values yet depicting Ella Watson in front of the flag contradicted them all. She represented an image of poverty and the opposite of the American Dream, appearing malnourished with missing buttons on her dress. The flag behind her alludes to presidential portraits or wartime propaganda posters, although the photograph is anything but patriotic. Parks seems to be ironically presenting Ella Watson as the true face of America. There is a jarring contrast in formality from the loose hanging, off-centre flag and the uneven distribution of light across Watson’s face, giving the image a gritty and realistic quality. The black and white film used appears dismal when compared to the bold colour of propaganda posters. This is the ‘gothic’ reality of America, presented boldly in front of what Parks considered to be a symbol of the lies perpetuated by society. The flag’s position above Watson in the top portion of the frame could represent the ideal of the American Dream and America’s power and dominance over Watson as the subject. Placing her below the centre grounds her in reality, possibly symbolising the separation between black people and this ideal of the American Dream, magnified by the shallow depth of field which blurs the flag.
The previously mentioned “control of Washington D.C.” over black Americans, talked about by Danny Moloshok, was inherent in American institutions such as the education system, where segregated schools discouraged black students from having aspirations of success. The flag’s authority over Watson in ‘American Gothic’ could suggest that Parks believed America was structured around keeping black people at the bottom of society, subsequently forcing them into poverty. In Grant Wood’s ‘American Gothic’ the couple are standing outside their home which appears pristine and structurally perfect. Similarly, Watson stands in front of what represents her supposedly perfect home. The vertical lines in the gothic architecture of the house are matched in Parks’ picture by the flag’s vertical stripes, although these look like prison cell bars around Watson, providing insight into the true nature of America.
Gordon Parks used his photography to reach out to American audiences and reveal the racial injustices being committed by society. ‘American Gothic’ is a bold criticism of America in which the hypocrisy of its inhumane treatment of black citizens is exposed. The use of semiotic analysis was appropriate as it allowed me to address the subtleties Parks used to present Ella Watson as the gothic face of black oppression in the 1940s and explore the use of the flag to emphasise America’s grotesque power, and hold it accountable for the suffering of those at the bottom of society. Through re-appropriating the imagery of Grant Wood’s painting, Parks was able to connect with white audiences to depict his feelings about American society. He wholeheartedly believed that America had betrayed its own citizens through forced obedience and a denial of basic rights, turning it into a prison for its black population