You know, the camera is not meant just to show misery.
Gordon Parks

And now, I feel at 85, I really feel that I'm just ready to start.
Gordon Parks

I was there less than a year before I was assigned to the Paris bureau. I spent two years there and, in fact, before I even went on the staff I was sent to Europe to do assignments which they wouldn't normally do for a young photographer just starting out.
Gordon Parks

The subject matter is so much more important than the photographer.
Gordon Parks

The photographer begins to feel big and bloated and so big he can't walk through one of these doors because he gets a good byline; he gets notices all over the world and so forth; but they're really - the important people are the people he photographs.
Gordon Parks

I'd become sort of involved in things that were happening to people. No matter what color they be, whether they be Indians, or Negroes, the poor white person or anyone who was I thought more or less getting a bad shake.
Gordon Parks

There's another horizon out there, one more horizon that you have to make for yourself and let other people discover it, and someone else will take it further on, you know.
Gordon Parks

But I was very disappointed that I didn't get a chance to go overseas with that group, might not have gotten back but I wanted very much to go because there's not much of a record of the exploits of the first Negro fighter group.
Gordon Parks