Throughout his life, photography played multiple roles for Ellison: a hobby, a source of income, a note-taking tool, and an artistic outlet.
In the last decades of his life, as he grappled with his much-anticipated second novel, Ellison’s work turned inward, and he studied his private universe at home with a Polaroid camera. For a period he supplemented his author’s income with work as a freelance photographer. Lesser known, however, is Ellison’s lifelong engagement with photography, which ran parallel to his writing.ĭuring his formative years in New York City in the 1940s, Ellison keenly photographed his surroundings-at times alongside fellow photographer Gordon Parks-with many images serving as field notes for his writing. His first and only novel published during his lifetime, Invisible Man (1952), remains a seminal work, hailed as a breakthrough representation of the American experience and Black everyday life. Ralph Ellison (1913–1994) is widely regarded as one of the foremost figures in American literature.
0 kommentar(er)
