Existing comment:
Gordon Parks
Washington, DC
Government charwoman
July 1942
To celebrate America's first Independence Day during World War II, three hundred magazines printed the nation's flag on their covers. Made just weeks later, this iconic portrait depicts Ella Watson at work, posed before a flag hanging in a government office. The power of Parks's picture lies in his careful juxtaposition of symbols: the patriotic stars and stripes, here slightly blurred, and the sharply focused, stoic cleaning woman, unable to advance in a segregated country that nonetheless requires her support in a time of war. Government charwoman was first published by Ebony in March 1948 and years later Parks titled it American Gothic, referring to Grant Wood's famous painting of midwestern farmers. The work recalls a panel from Jacob Lawrence's epic Migration Series, which similarly evokes the dignity of working African American women. Parks likely would have been familiar with Lawrence's work, which was published in Fortune in 1941 and exhibited the following year at the Phillips Memorial Gallery in Washington. |