American Gothic in color: Ella Watson, 1942

In August 1942, Gordon Parks photographed Ella Watson, a government charwoman, in Washington, D.C. Parks had arrived in the capital that January to apprentice at the Farm Security Administration under a Rosenwald Fellowship. The archive records the month and year, but no exact day or time. 12

After hearing about Watson's life, Parks placed her before an American flag with a broom and mop. He called the picture American Gothic, turning a government worker who was essential to the capital yet largely overlooked into the image's central subject. The pose echoes Grant Wood's painting while confronting the racial, professional, and economic hierarchies of segregated Washington. 2

The frame endures because it says a great deal with four things: a woman, a flag, a broom, and a mop. The colorization is an interpretation; the original remains beside it as the evidence. The source is the Library of Congress Farm Security Administration–Office of War Information Photograph Collection, digital ID fsa.8b14845. It is marked public domain as a U.S. government work. 13