Ralph Ellison (1913–1994) is widely regarded as one of the foremost figures in American literature. His first and only novel published during his lifetime, Invisible Man (1952), remains a seminal work, hailed as a breakthrough representation of the American experience and Black everyday life. Lesser known, however, is Ellison’s lifelong engagement with photography, which ran parallel to his writing.

Throughout his life, photography played multiple roles for Ellison: a hobby, a source of income, a note-taking tool, and a creative outlet. His photographic work from the 1930s through the 1990s reveals an artist steeped in modernist thinking who embraced experimentation as a means to interpret the world around him, particularly the representation of Black life in America. In a 1956 letter to fellow writer Albert Murray requesting advice on purchasing new photographic equipment, Ellison underlined 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.”

During his formative years in New York City in the 1940s, Ellison experimented with photographic technologies and styles to document his surroundings, with many images serving as field notes for his writing. For a period he supplemented his author’s income with work as a freelance photographer. During this time, his friend and collaborator, Gordon Parks, offered informal training, and the two spent weeks roaming Harlem together, each with a camera in hand. They first joined forces on the 1948 essay “Harlem Is Nowhere” for ’48: The Magazine of the Year, which focused on Harlem’s Lafargue Clinic, the first racially integrated psychiatric clinic in New York City. Ellison envisioned photographs as a necessary element of the essay, but rather than taking those photographs himself, he chose Gordon Parks to carry out the task. In preparation, Ellison wrote a set of guidelines challenging the photographer to create images that serve as “both document and symbol.” The magazine that had commissioned “Harlem Is Nowhere” declared bankruptcy and the article was never published. In 1952, after Invisible Man finally appeared in print, Ellison and Parks collaborated again, this time on a story for Life magazine, “A Man Becomes Invisible,” that introduced Ellison’s novel.

This exhibition presents photographs by Ellison made in the 1940s in New York. These are shown with a selection of images made by Parks at the same time, some likely alongside Ellison. All are held in The Gordon Parks Foundation's archives. This presentation is held in conjunction with the book Ralph Ellison: Photographer, published by The Gordon Parks Foundation, the Ralph and Fanny Ellison Charitable Trust, and Steidl.