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 3/2/2025 Artbook at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles Bookstore presents Spencer Gerhardt launching 'Ticking Stripe'DATE 3/2/2025 Artbook at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles Bookstore presents Spencer Gerhardt launching 'Ticking Stripe'DATE 3/2/2025 Artbook at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles Bookstore presents Spencer Gerhardt launching 'Ticking Stripe'DATE 2/15/2025 Palm Springs Modernism Week presents Christopher Rawlins on 'Fire Island Modernist,' new editionDATE 2/15/2025 Artbook at MoMA PS1 Bookstore presents Charles Gaines and Huey Copeland launching 'The Theater of Refusal: Black Art and Mainstream Criticism'DATE 2/13/2025 Rizzoli Bookstore presents John Dolan and Peter Hermann on 'The Perfect Imperfect'DATE 2/12/2025 Join Artbook | D.A.P. at the 2025 CAA National ConferenceDATE 2/11/2025 Skira presents Bonnie Clearwater, David Mirvish and Eric N. Mack launching 'Glory of the World: Color Field Painting'DATE 2/9/2025 'Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal' opens at the Hammer!DATE 2/7/2025 CARA presents Simone Fattal launching her new monograph in conversation with Negar AzimiDATE 2/5/2025 A book like no other: 'Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery'DATE 2/2/2025 Join Artbook | D.A.P. at Shoppe Object New York 2025DATE 2/1/2025 Celebrate Black History Month, 2025 | 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 |