Edited with text by Peter W. Kunhardt Jr., Michal Raz-Russo, John F. Callahan. Text by Adam Bradley, Ralph Ellison.
The first ever book on Ellison's lifelong photography practice, from New York scenes to domestic vignettes
Ralph Ellison is a leading figure in American literature, hailed for his seminal novel Invisible Man (1952), a breakthrough representation of the American experience and Black everyday life. Lesser known, however, is his lifelong engagement with photography. Photographer is the first book dedicated to Ellison’s extensive work in the medium, which spans the 1930s to the ’90s. Throughout his life, photography played multiple roles for Ellison: a hobby, a source of income, a note-taking tool and an artistic outlet. During his formative years in New York City in the 1940s, he keenly photographed his surroundings—at times alongside fellow photographer Gordon Parks—with many images serving as field notes for his writing. In the last decades of his life, as he grappled with his much-anticipated second novel, Ellison turned inward, and he studied his private universe at home with a Polaroid camera. At all times his photography reveals an artist steeped in modernist thinking who embraced experimentation to interpret the world around him, particularly Black life in America. In a 1956 letter to fellow writer Albert Murray, Ellison underscored photography’s importance to his creative process: "You know me, I have to have something between me and reality when I’m dealing with it most intensely." Accompanying the photographs in this book are several essays situating Ellison’s work within his broader career as a writer, as well an excerpt from his 1977 essay "The Little Man at Chehaw Station: The American Artist and His Audience." Ralph Ellison was born in Oklahoma City in 1913. His love of music led him to enroll at Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute in Macon County, Alabama, as a music major. In 1936 he visited New York City, where he befriended established authors and intellectuals who encouraged him to pursue a career in writing. He joined the Federal Writers’ Project and began contributing essays and short stories for publications such as New Masses, The Negro Quarterly, The New Republic and Saturday Review. By 1945 he had signed a contract to write what was to become Invisible Man (1952); it won the National Book Award in 1953 but remained his only novel published during his lifetime. He published two subsequent collections of essays, Shadow and Act (1964) and Going to the Territory (1986). For many years Ellison worked on a second novel, which he never completed; its central narrative was published posthumously as Three Days Before the Shooting... (2010). Ellison died in 1994.
Featured image is reproduced from 'Ralph Ellison: Photographer.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
The New York Times
Arthur Lubow
Ellison’s photographs are eloquent, and in a few instances startling. They provide welcome new information on how he observed the society he inhabited.
ArtDesk
Alana Ruiz de la Peña
Minimally designed throughout, the editors let these gorgeous and sometimes haunting images create the narrative.
Independent Photographer
Josh Bright
This book is not only a valuable addition to Ellison’s artistic legacy but also a compelling invitation to reassess the boundaries of artistic expression and recognize the profound contributions of a true literary giant to the world of photography.
Blind
Miss Rosen Miss
In this way, Ellison could render visible all that had been erased, much in the same way he had done by giving a disembodied voice form in his groundbreaking novel, Invisible Man. No matter his weapon of choice, Ellison understood art’s ability to transform our relationship to reality.
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“Untitled (Mozelle Murray),” (1940s) is from Ralph Ellison: Photographer, the first book to collect the noted American writer’s photographs. Spanning from the 1930s to the 1990s, these include snapshots and Polaroids, landscapes, still lifes, portraits and scenes of Black life. “For Ellison, photography, much like writing, permitted him to investigate alternative methods of representing Black life and its ‘blending of styles, values, hopes and dreams’ that argued its centrality to American culture,” Michal Raz-Russo writes. “Twenty years after he wrote those lines, in his eulogy for [Romare] Bearden, Ellison referred to both the artist and himself when he concluded that the only way to express the ‘complex sense of American and Afro-American variety and diversity, discord and unity’ was to draw on the unique lived experience of the self and thereby ‘confront and impose [one’s] own artistic sense of order upon the world.’ The camera proved a useful tool for him to create field notes as well as find his ‘sense of order.’ In a 1956 letter to fellow writer Albert Murray requesting advice on purchasing new 35mm photographic equipment, Ellison underlined its importance: ‘You know me, I have to have something between me and reality when I’m dealing with it most intensely.’” continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 8.75 x 10.5 in. / 240 pgs / 42 color / 90 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $60.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $84 ISBN: 9783969991800 PUBLISHER: Steidl/Gordon Parks Foundation/Ralph and Fanny Ellison Charitable Trust AVAILABLE: 4/18/2023 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Published by Steidl/Gordon Parks Foundation/Ralph and Fanny Ellison Charitable Trust. Edited with text by Peter W. Kunhardt Jr., Michal Raz-Russo, John F. Callahan. Text by Adam Bradley, Ralph Ellison.
The first ever book on Ellison's lifelong photography practice, from New York scenes to domestic vignettes
Ralph Ellison is a leading figure in American literature, hailed for his seminal novel Invisible Man (1952), a breakthrough representation of the American experience and Black everyday life. Lesser known, however, is his lifelong engagement with photography. Photographer is the first book dedicated to Ellison’s extensive work in the medium, which spans the 1930s to the ’90s.
Throughout his life, photography played multiple roles for Ellison: a hobby, a source of income, a note-taking tool and an artistic outlet. During his formative years in New York City in the 1940s, he keenly photographed his surroundings—at times alongside fellow photographer Gordon Parks—with many images serving as field notes for his writing. In the last decades of his life, as he grappled with his much-anticipated second novel, Ellison turned inward, and he studied his private universe at home with a Polaroid camera. At all times his photography reveals an artist steeped in modernist thinking who embraced experimentation to interpret the world around him, particularly Black life in America. In a 1956 letter to fellow writer Albert Murray, Ellison underscored photography’s importance to his creative process: "You know me, I have to have something between me and reality when I’m dealing with it most intensely." Accompanying the photographs in this book are several essays situating Ellison’s work within his broader career as a writer, as well an excerpt from his 1977 essay "The Little Man at Chehaw Station: The American Artist and His Audience."
Ralph Ellison was born in Oklahoma City in 1913. His love of music led him to enroll at Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute in Macon County, Alabama, as a music major. In 1936 he visited New York City, where he befriended established authors and intellectuals who encouraged him to pursue a career in writing. He joined the Federal Writers’ Project and began contributing essays and short stories for publications such as New Masses, The Negro Quarterly, The New Republic and Saturday Review. By 1945 he had signed a contract to write what was to become Invisible Man (1952); it won the National Book Award in 1953 but remained his only novel published during his lifetime. He published two subsequent collections of essays, Shadow and Act (1964) and Going to the Territory (1986). For many years Ellison worked on a second novel, which he never completed; its central narrative was published posthumously as Three Days Before the Shooting... (2010). Ellison died in 1994.
