Veteran journalist-photographer Rowland Parks has been busy of late documenting the yin and the yang of our Old Capital, Belize City. His extensive exhibit of 76 recent photographs (plus 300 image slide show) provocatively titled RAW opens on October 21st at the Image Factory Art Gallery.

RAW is something of a first for Parks. For inexplicable reasons even though he has been taking photos professionally for at least 30 years, no art venue has given him a comprehensive exhibition until the IF’s RAW. Parks earned his photographic stripes documenting various newsworthy events in and around the mean streets of the City’s infamous Southside. Parks and his camera went where other shutterbugs feared to tread. He is an unrelenting snoop, going anywhere he smells a story in the making. Parks’ tenacity has earned him a reputation as a gadfly; sniping here and there with a freewheeling camera that can both catch Cartier Bresson’s all important “decisive moment” and the scorching soul of writer-filmmaker-photographer Gordon Parks’ (no blood relation to Rowland) Civil Rights and Harlem ghetto series that appeared in Life Magazine in the early 60s.

I’ll u-turn from RAW for a minute to give a thumbnail sketch of the watershed career of Black artist Gordon Parks'. His first assignment for Life was a lulu; to profile  Harlem gang leader Red Jackson. Parks hung out with the gangs for three months. His classic photo is of Red Jackson defiantly brandishing a .45 pistol waiting for a showdown with a rival gang. Parks worked at Life for 25 years and completed over 300 assignments. He retired as Life’s star photojournalist in 1972. He cited his most important stories for Life were the Harlem gang story, his first Paris fashion shoot in 1949, the Ingrid Bergman-Roberto Rosellini love affair on Stromboli, a cross-country U.S. crime series, an American poetry series that interpreted in photographs the works of leading U.S. poets, the Black Muslims and Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, and Martin Luther King's death. Gordon Parks was the Black conscious during the turbulent 60s in the States. 

In 1962 Parks began his movie career by writing and directing a documentary about Flavio. In 1968 he became the first Black to produce and direct a film for a major studio, Warner Bros. Seven Arts. The film, The Learning Tree, was based on Parks' 1963 autobiographical novel. Parks became internationally renowned when he directed the blockbuster drama, Shaft (1971), followed by Shaft's Big Score (1972), and The Super Cops (1974). He was the first director to focus on the machismo and self-assured sexuality of Blacks in movies.  

Back to RAW. Parks’ RAW exhibit isn’t about pretty. Isn’t about nostalgia. Isn’t about viewing life through rose tinted glasses. What RAW is about is stripping away the accepted norms for subject matter and brazenly recording life in Belize City, warts and all, from the bottom looking up. Many of Parks images are of the “Times haad out here” residents of shantytown. Unexpectedly even though most of his photos record the impoverished, they don’t come off pessimistic. There’s a subtext of dignity, self esteem lurking beneath the surface of the “have-nots” images.

That inherent paradox (poor but proud) in Parks’ photographs could be misconstrued and abused. Belize is a melting pot of disparate ethnicities and cultures. The friction among them was promoted by the colonialists; the divide and conquer theory of oppression. There is still some residual bubbling, grudges brewing beneath the placid facades that are exploited by some opportunists. The bubbling induces frustration. With frustration comes emotionalism. With emotionalism comes unthinking responses. It is not inconceivable that some very well-meaning, emotionally frustrated persons will point their finger at Parks’ photos and pronounce those images responsible for triggering rivalry, antagonism. The Marxist clashing of classes. The moral right could condemn RAW as just too gritty for polite sensibility.

In that mighty World Power to the north, now retired right-wing politician Jesse Helms made a career out of imposing his morals on the National Endowment for the Arts and the artists and art work that receive N.E.A. funding. The Helms’ way of doing things was to dictate to artists what were and were not acceptable images, content and styles for their creative vision. Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini all ideas similar to Helms’ concerning propriety in art. Goose-stepping and Sieg Heiling morality down the populace’s throats.

The logical flaw in that aggressive moralistic mode is that they put the cart before the horse. Art doesn’t generate or inspire aberrant behavior as much as it tends to be reflective of the society-culture-environment from which it originates. Art holds a mirror up to society’s face, and says, “Look here.”

Art helps people see reality, and successful art like Rowland Parks’ can be interpreted several divergent ways depending on the angle the viewer chooses. An individual with a nasty mindset will likely see corruption and malaise in anything. Conversely, an individual with an up-beat, positive attitude will likely see decency and decorum permeating the same art piece. People tend to carry their own emotions to the art experience.

So in that context Rowland Parks’ RAW photos will certainly be reviled and lauded simultaneously, depending on the viewers’ a priori emotional baggage. Those with negative political agendas will surely use Parks photos of the roots folks like the one of vocalist Lugua and “Wildman” Baltazar with six friends/musicians (one with Garifuna drum) hanging out in front of a dilapidated shack in ‘Little Honduras’ up the street from Bismark Club as an indictment of GOB neglect. Look again. Check out the wry humor and strength those dudes show. They aren’t victims, they’re typical, grass roots artists scrutinizing and grimacing at the uppity photographer snapping their pic. There’s a whole bunch of pride emitting from those gnarly artists.  

And speaking of ‘uppity’, Parks has made a career out of ‘uppity’. He goes places and snaps things that the more timid individuals wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole. Just three weeks ago Parks was at the ACB protest rally documenting the event in typical in-your-face paparazzi manner and got his life threatened by one female talk show host. Not exactly a new experience for Parks. His brash, from the hip outspokenness has ruffled quite a few feathers over the years. If memory serves me right, about a year ago he was unceremoniously dumped from one popular Wednesday night talk show for verbal indiscretions. Likewise RAW also might be too visually indiscrete for some tastes.  

RAW covers a lot of territory: from celebrity defendants to the Governor General posing shoulder to shoulder with Parks under the Treasury Lane signpost to Pulu Lightburn au natural in a Garden of Eden setting to throngs of people milling around Conch Shell Bay (Vernon Street Bridge) when the fishermen bring in their catch. RAW is an exhibit that is long overdue. RAW is NOT half-baked, NOT medium rare and NOT delicately seasoned. It’s heady stuff, definitely worth a look-see.