Joshua Parks is a Black cultural worker who uses filmmaking, photography, and archivism to analyze urban and rural communities in the Black Belt South; their relationship to land and water as the basis of subsistence, autonomy, survival, and collective memory; and how these elements influence cultural and spiritual development. He was raised in Jacksonville, Fla., but his roots stretch from the Lowcountry of South Carolina to the interior of Georgia, down to the Gulf Coast of Florida and Alabama.
Joshua was the principal photographer for the Greenbook of South Carolina (2022) and has photos exhibited at the International African American Museum, Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, the Seashore Farmers’ Lodge Museum and Cultural Center, and the Ferrette House.
He formerly served as an in-house producer for the International African American Museum, contributing to their core films and digital exhibitions (short educational documentaries) such as Flashpoints Interviews, A Brief History of Mother Emanuel AME Church, Carolina Gold, Memories of the Enslaved, Gullah Geechee Overview Film, Praise House Film, A Brief History: International Longshoremen’s Association Local 1422, A Brief History: Moving Star Hall, Community Connections: The Parks-Wilder Family, and more.
