(upbeat jazz music) - Gordon Parks created a lasting record of communities and people who otherwise were being marginalized or overlooked by mainstream media outlets.

The idea that a black man could be a photographer was probably foreign to most people.

- Gordon Parks was someone who could see something and style it, pose it, make it work.

- [Dan] His work blazed a trail that would lead to many photographers being able to see themselves in this profession.

(upbeat jazz music) My name is Dan Leers, I am the Curator of the Gordon Parks in Pittsburgh Exhibition at the Carnegie Museum Of Art, and have been working on it for the past three years.

Selecting the photographs for this exhibition was really an incredible experience.

Working with staff at the Gordon Parks Foundation, as well as at the University of Louisville Library and the University of Texas in Austin.

We uncovered a great deal of material related to the photographs that Parks made here.

(upbeat jazz music) Gordon Parks was born the youngest of 15 children in Fort Scott, Kansas.

As he grew older, he went to a pawn shop in Chicago and bought a camera, from there he just went out and taught himself how to take pictures, and very quickly he developed a very distinct and unique eye.

(upbeat jazz music) Parks began working professionally as a photographer and came to the attention of Roy Stryker, who gave him a job.

He headed up an organization called, the Farm Security Administration, which employed photographers to travel around the country photographing people and places affected by the Great Depression.

(melancholic music) The Standard Oil Corporation was the largest oil manufacturing company in the world, and they hired Roy Stryker to create the largest private photographic archive documenting the company's face around the world.

Stryker brought over his photographers, including Gordon Parks, to work on assignment.

Stryker asked Gordon Parks to travel to the Penola Inc.

Grease Plant in Pittsburgh, in March of 1944, to document that plant's efforts in producing what was called Eisenhower grease to support the allied troop effort overseas.

Eisenhower grease was a special lubricant or grease for his tanks, his Jeeps and his trucks.

The Penola Inc.

Grease Plant was located on Smallman Street between 33rd and 35th Streets.

The plant is still standing, it is now a tire factory.

However, a historical marker acknowledges the contributions of this grease plant to the war effort.

(melancholic music) When Gordon Parks first arrived at the plant in March of 1944, he saw a tremendous industrial company that was working around the clock producing lubricants.

It was hot because the grease needed to be heated sometimes to 500 degrees.

It involved dangerous chemicals like lye, and it was sticky.

The Penola Inc.

Grease Plant was a fairly diverse plant.

There were efforts made on part of the executives at the plant to make sure that Parks photographed a balanced representation of the company, he could not just focus on the black workers in the plant.

For having only learned photography several years before coming to Pittsburgh, Parks had already become a true master of the camera.

And one of the ways that we can see that is through his incredible use of dramatic lighting.

This photograph was the one that started this entire exhibition.

I first saw it and realized it was titled, Pittsburgh, 1944.

This is the Cooper's Room where barrels are cleaned in order to prepare them to house the oil before it is shipped out to its clients.

What's fascinating is that Parks is in a lot of ways heroicizing this gentleman and his work by positioning himself just lower than the man, looking up at him and also flashing his strobes so that we can clearly see his face, his apron and the barrel.

This is a very important photograph for a couple of reasons.

One of which is that it demonstrates Parks' technical mastery with a camera.

These gas jets give off a tremendous light and a tremendous heat, also indicating just how dangerous this work really was.

After Parks had made the correct exposure for these gas jets, he then asked these two gentlemen to step into the picture.

Once they were positioned underneath these incredibly hot flames, Parks opened the shutter of his camera again and popped a flash in order to expose their faces, and we could see the reflection of that flash in this gentleman's glasses.

Gordon Parks made his first visit to Pittsburgh in 1944 and he returned in September of 1946.

His second visit was covered by the Pittsburgh Courier Newspaper and the Pittsburgh Courier had one of the largest circulations of any newspaper in the country.

They sent their top photographer, Charles Teenie Harris to photograph Parks in the printing plant of the Courier Newspaper.

- I'm Charlene Foggie-Barnett, I'm the community archivist for the Charles Teenie Harris archive here at Carnegie Museum of Art.

We have nearly 80,000 photos that Teenie took and included in those are some that he photographed of Gordon Parks.

Teenie being a local artist, not as well known as Gordon Parks, but someone that Teenie admired so much and they had different styles.

Teenie didn't pose people, he took people kind of in real time, he kind of captured moments that were not planned, and that's kind of the earmark of success.

Gordon Parks offers something that is very kind of classic, you can almost see it framed in the way he has photographed it himself.

So, I love the two styles together.

And one of the wonderful opportunities of coming down to the Carnegie to see the Gordon Park Show is that you're just steps away, in another gallery to see Teenie Harris as well.

(upbeat piano) - In many ways, the photographs that Parks made in Pittsburgh in 1944 and 1946, represented an incredible moment in Parks' trajectory as a photographer.

Just after completing this series in 1947, Parks would become the first black staff photographer for Life Magazine.

He also was a prolific author, who wrote bestselling novels including, The Learning Tree, which was turned into the first movie directed by a black director, produced by a major Hollywood studio, and eventually and perhaps most notably to our audiences, Parks would go on to direct the film, Shaft, which has its rightful place in the cannon of American popular culture.

And then his son directed, Super Fly.

(Dan laughing) Gordon Parks had an incredibly prolific and productive career, and in 2006, he passed away at the age of 94.

My hope is that people will come here and be personally impacted by these photographs, in part because they might see someone that they know or even just see a kind of story or history that resonates with them.

I grew up knowing the stories of how this city was essential to the nation's war effort in the 1940s and 50s.

I think these photographs give a very close up and intimate view of just what exactly that work was, and maybe more importantly, who was doing it.

(melodious music) (upbeat jazz music)