Gordon Parks, the former Life magazine photographer who became a prime mover in the development of African-American cinema with such films as The Learning Tree and Shaft, died in New York on March 7 of undisclosed causes. He was 93.

Born in Fort Scott, Kansas on November 30, 1912. Parks was the youngest of 15 children raised by impoverished farmers. He was orphaned at 15 and took a series of odd jobs to survive, from a piano player in a jazz band to a hotel bellboy in New York City to a waiter on a luxury train. He discovered photography in the late '30s and became self taught; he found himself doing everything from fashion spreads to war correspondence before he joined Life magazine in 1948 as the publication's first African-American photographer.

He shot more than 300 photographic essays for Life and arguably his most profound work came in the '60s. In 1961, he covered the plight of a poverty-stricken family in Rio de Janeiro whose young son, Flavio, was dying of asthma and malnutrition. In 1963, he was one one of the first photographers to get an inside look at the lives and political aspirations of Black Muslims including Malcolm X. Around this time, Parks also had his first novel published, a semi-autobiographical story, The Learning Tree, that told the tale of a smart, sensitive teenager growing up in a small Kansas town in the '20s.

Parks entered filmmaking when he shot a documentary on the life of the Brazilian boy in his Life shoot, Flavio (1964). One of the subjects he had befriended over the years when he worked for Life was maverick movie director John Cassavetes. It was Cassavetes who encouraged Parks to direct his own adaptation of The Learning Tree and in 1969, Parks was hired by Warner Brothers to produce, direct and adapt his own novel to the big screen. It was a historic first for a black director - working with a major film studio.

The Learning Tree was a modest success, but it didn't prepare anyone for his next film, the tough urban detective thriller Shaft (1971). This swiftly paced, action packed film was the first to showcase a black hero, the super cool detective John Shaft (Richard Roundtree) who battled criminal elements in Harlem. The film was a box-office smash that crossed racial lines, and it helped launch the "blaxploitation" cinema craze of the early '70s such as Superfly (1972) which was directed by his son, Gordon Parks Jr., Cleopatra Jones (1973), and Foxy Brown (1974).

Parks' film output would be relatively slim afterwards: Shaft's Big Score (1972), The Super Cops (1974), and a fine biography of folk singer Huddie Ledbetter Leadbelly (1976). Nevertheless, he concentrated on lectures and writing, producing a few telling memoirs in his later life with To Smile in Autumn (1979) and Voices in the Mirror (1990). He is survived by a son, David; daughters, Toni and Leslie; and several grandchildren.

by Michael T. Toole