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ARTBOOK BLOGEventsStore NewsMuseum Stores of the MonthNew Title ReleasesStaff PicksImage GalleryBooks in the MediaExcerpts & EssaysArtbook InterviewsEx LibrisAt First SightThe Artbook 2024 Gift GuidesArtbook Featured Image ArchiveArtbook D.A.P. Events ArchiveDATE 7/15/2025 Join us at the Atlanta Gift & Home Summer Market 2025DATE 7/11/2025 Join us at the San Francisco Art Book Fair, 2025!DATE 7/6/2025 'Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me' is a book for lifeDATE 7/3/2025 This holiday weekend, consider the Lobster!DATE 7/1/2025 Hot Child in the City: Summertime Staff Picks, 2025DATE 6/30/2025 Head Hi New York Book Club presents 'Jasper Morrison: A Book of Things'DATE 6/30/2025 Raise your spades for Ron Finley, Gangsta GardenerDATE 6/27/2025 In Kent Monkman, a little mischief may lead to monumental changeDATE 6/26/2025 1920s Japanese graphic design in a playful boxed postcard setDATE 6/25/2025 Rizzoli presents Anderson Zaca with Thom (Panzi) Hansen for the NYC launch of 'Fire Island Invasion: A Day of Independence'DATE 6/22/2025 Artbook at MoMA PS1 Bookstore presents Dawoud Bey, Michelle Kuo and Joseph Logan on 'Jack Whitten: The Messenger'DATE 6/22/2025 Enlightening 'Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal' is Back in Stock!DATE 6/21/2025 ICP Photobook Club presents Anderson Zaca on 'Fire Island Invasion' | IMAGE GALLERYCORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/1/2023'Ralph Ellison: Photographer' from Steidl“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.’”![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Ralph Ellison: PhotographerSteidl/Gordon Parks Foundation/Ralph and Fanny Ellison Charitable Trust |