[The Rise & Revolt] On Gordon Parks's [I Am You]

            In an effort to separate ourselves from the most undesirable penalties or events, we vilify; it’s an uncanny, unfortunate defense mechanism but humans, humanity, has proven it is willing to do whatever it takes to survive, even if that survival determines the demise of another species, a dictated lesser species.

            In Gordon Park’s [I am You], an African-American man emerges from a man-hole in the ground. The camera captures this emergence at an equivalent level as would be someone willing to see eye to eye, wanting to see this man rising. Below our feet, there is another world, where all things unwanted are discarded and flow with the collective rest into the oblivion of those walking above short-term memories.

            But what happens when someone discarded refused to be discarded, beyond that, when the one refusing to be discarded, in their very refusal, inspire the rest to denounce their disenfranchisement? Parks photographs the beginning of a revolution, how it takes one of many various forms, and what appears to us a man just emerging from a pot hole, its representation for the capitalist, adrift in their greed, fearing a revolt, fearing a resurrection from the once silenced.