A forgotten portfolio, back for our viewing and reading pleasure a book offering the photography and writing of two giants, briefly reviewed here:
RALPH ELLISON AND GORDON PARKS’S JOINT HARLEM VISION
In the summer of 1947, editors from the short-lived magazine ’47, known since its shuttering in 1948 as The Magazine of the Year, contacted Ralph Ellison—then in the thick of his seven-year labor to complete “Invisible Man”—with an idea for a photo essay on the Lafargue Psychiatric Clinic in Harlem. Established a year earlier with help from Richard Wright, the clinic had become famous for its stance against segregation, not only in the clientele it served but also, perhaps more remarkably, in its all-volunteer staff. Ellison was excited by the prospect, and, after enlisting the photographer Gordon Parks—an acquaintance from Harlem artistic and intellectual circles—he accepted the assignment, though the magazine would go out of business before the photo essay could be published.
From the start, the collaboration, called “Harlem is Nowhere,” was marked by the ambition characteristic of both men; Ellison wrote to Wright that it “should make for something new in photo-journalism—if Gordon Parks is able to capture those aspects of Harlem reality which are so clear to me.” A new book, “Invisible Man: Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison in Harlem,” which collects the photographs alongside Ellison’s text for the first time (and accompanies an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, running through August), confirms that, yes, Parks was able, and spectacularly so…
Read the whole review here.
Organikos 