fb pixcode

PHOTOGRAPHER MONOGRAPHS

PUBLISHER
Steidl/Gordon Parks Foundation/Ralph and Fanny Ellison Charitable Trust

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 8.75 x 10.5 in. / 240 pgs / 42 color / 90 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2023 p. 57   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9783969991800 TRADE
List Price: $60.00 CAD $84.00

AVAILABILITY
In stock

TERRITORY
NA ONLY

THE FALL 2024 ARTBOOK | D.A.P. CATALOG

Artbook | D.A.P. Catalog Cover Link
Preview our FALL 2024 catalog, featuring more than 500 new books on art, photography, design, architecture, film, music and visual culture.
  

STEIDL/GORDON PARKS FOUNDATION/RALPH AND FANNY ELLISON CHARITABLE TRUST

Ralph Ellison: Photographer

Edited with text by Peter W. Kunhardt Jr., Michal Raz-Russo, John F. Callahan. Text by Adam Bradley, Ralph Ellison.

Ralph Ellison: Photographer

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.

Ralph Ellison: Photographer

in stock  $60.00


Free Shipping

UPS GROUND IN THE CONTINENTAL U.S.
FOR CONSUMER ONLINE ORDERS

FORTHCOMING AND RECENT PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS

Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue

LIFE DANCES ON: ROBERT FRANK IN DIALOGUE

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

ISBN: 9781633451643
USD $60.00
| CAD $87.5

Pub Date: 9/24/2024
Active | In stock


Catherine Opie: Genre / Gender / Portraiture

CATHERINE OPIE: GENRE / GENDER / PORTRAITURE

Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand/KMEC Books

ISBN: 9786557770610
USD $45.00
| CAD $62 UK £ 40

Pub Date: 2/4/2025
Forthcoming


Jacques-Henri Lartigue: The Proof of Color

JACQUES-HENRI LARTIGUE: THE PROOF OF COLOR

Atelier EXB

ISBN: 9782365114073
USD $55.00
| CAD $79

Pub Date: 11/12/2024
Forthcoming


Robert Frank: The Lines of My Hand

ROBERT FRANK: THE LINES OF MY HAND

Steidl

ISBN: 9783969993675
USD $60.00
| CAD $87.5

Pub Date: 2/11/2025
Forthcoming


Robert Frank: Red Table, Green Tree, From the Window, by the Window

ROBERT FRANK: RED TABLE, GREEN TREE, FROM THE WINDOW, BY THE WINDOW

Steidl

ISBN: 9783969993644
USD $80.00
| CAD $120

Pub Date: 2/11/2025
Forthcoming


Robert Frank: Seven Stories

ROBERT FRANK: SEVEN STORIES

Steidl

ISBN: 9783969993668
USD $45.00
| CAD $62

Pub Date: 2/11/2025
Forthcoming


Robert Frank: Hold Still, Keep Going

ROBERT FRANK: HOLD STILL, KEEP GOING

Steidl

ISBN: 9783969993699
USD $60.00
| CAD $87.5

Pub Date: 2/11/2025
Forthcoming


Robert Frank: Visual Diaries

ROBERT FRANK: VISUAL DIARIES

Steidl

ISBN: 9783969993651
USD $80.00
| CAD $120

Pub Date: 2/11/2025
Forthcoming


Toilet Alex Paper Prager

TOILET ALEX PAPER PRAGER

Damiani

ISBN: 9788862088190
USD $23.00
| CAD $34

Pub Date: 11/12/2024
Active | In stock


Neal Slavin: When Two or More Are Gathered Together

NEAL SLAVIN: WHEN TWO OR MORE ARE GATHERED TOGETHER

Damiani

ISBN: 9788862088299
USD $45.00
| CAD $65

Pub Date: 11/12/2024
Active | In stock


Luke Gilford: National Anthem

LUKE GILFORD: NATIONAL ANTHEM

Damiani

ISBN: 9788862088282
USD $75.00
| CAD $115

Pub Date: 11/12/2024
Active | In stock