{"product_id":"ralph-ellison-photographer-9783969991800","title":"Ralph Ellison: Photographer","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRalph Ellison (1913-94) is a foremost figure in American literature, hailed for his seminal novel \u003ci\u003eInvisible Man\u003c\/i\u003e (1952), a breakthrough representation of the American experience and Black everyday life. Lesser known, however, is his lifelong engagement with photography. \u003ci\u003ePhotographer\u003c\/i\u003e is the first book dedicated to Ellison's extensive work in the medium, which spans from the 1930s to the '90s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThroughout 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn 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.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAccompanying 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.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhat 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?\u003c\/i\u003e - Ralph Ellison, introduction to \u003ci\u003eShadow and Act\u003c\/i\u003e, 1964\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eCo-published with The Gordon Parks Foundation and the Ralph and Fanny Ellison Charitable Trust.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Thames and Hudson (Australia) Pty Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47362959409388,"sku":"9783969991800","price":120.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/13788213483601.jpg?v=1772907238","url":"https:\/\/bookhero.co.nz\/products\/ralph-ellison-photographer-9783969991800","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}