Ralph Ellison: Photographer

Name: Ralph Ellison: Photographer
Brand: Thames and Hudson (Australia) Pty Ltd
SKU: 9783969991800
Price: 120.0 NZD
Availability: InStock

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Summary

Ralph Ellison: Photographer explores the lesser-known artistic side of the celebrated writer, Ralph Ellison. The book presents a carefully curated collection of Ellison's photographs, showcasing his keen eye for capturing everyday life and cultural scenes with depth and artistic flair. It offers insights into Ellison's visual storytelling, providing a rich perspective on his creative vision beyond his literary works.
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Format: Hardback

$120⁰⁰

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Ralph Ellison: Photographer

$120⁰⁰

Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This book may appeal to you if you are fascinated by the intersection of literature and visual art, particularly with an interest in exploring the photographic work of a renowned literary figure. Through carefully curated images and insightful commentary, it offers a unique perspective on creativity and cultural observation, ideal for those who appreciate both photography and the broader context of artistic expression in the mid-20th century.

Description

Ralph Ellison (1913-94) is a foremost 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 from 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, studying 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 as an excerpt from his 1977 essay "The Little Man at Chehaw Station: The American Artist and His Audience."

What does American society mean when regarded out of my own eyes, when informed by my own sense of the past and viewed by my own complex sense of the present? - Ralph Ellison, introduction to Shadow and Act, 1964

Co-published with The Gordon Parks Foundation and the Ralph and Fanny Ellison Charitable Trust.

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Ralph Ellison: Photographer highlights Ellison's ability to reveal the unseen, akin to his impact in literature with Invisible Man. The book is minimally designed, allowing the evocative images to convey their own narrative. It invites readers to reconsider the limits of artistic expression and appreciate Ellison's influence in photography, as noted by critics who find his images both eloquent and occasionally startling.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9783969991800

Publisher: Steidl Publishers

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 23 March 2023

Country: Germany

Imprint: Steidl Verlag

Illustration: 90 black-and-white and 42 color photographs, Four-color process

Contributors:

Edited by Michal Raz-Russo
Edited by John F. Callahan
Text by Adam Bradley
Edited by John F. Callahan
Edited by John F. Callahan

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 220.0mm

Height: 270.0mm

Weight: 1320g

Pages: 240

Collections

Arts & Culture Non-Fiction

About the Author

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.