Ralph Ellison the Photographer at The Gordon Parks Foundation

Summary

All Of It Podcast Summary: "Ralph Ellison the Photographer at The Gordon Parks Foundation"

Host: Alison Stewart
Guest: Michal Ras Russo, Program Director at the Gordon Parks Foundation
Release Date: January 6, 2025
Episode Focus: Exhibition of Ralph Ellison's photography at the Gordon Parks Foundation Gallery

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Introduction

In this episode of All Of It, host Alison Stewart delves into the multifaceted artistry of Ralph Ellison, renowned primarily for his literary masterpiece, Invisible Man. The focus shifts to Ellison's lesser-known work as a photographer, highlighted in a curated exhibition at the Gordon Parks Foundation Gallery. This exhibition not only showcases Ellison's photographic endeavors from the 1940s but also explores his collaborative relationship with the illustrious photographer and filmmaker, Gordon Parks.

Ralph Ellison's Photography in the 1940s

Alison Stewart introduces the exhibition by emphasizing Ellison's transition from the written word to the lens of a camera. She notes that Ellison's photographs from the 1940s capture vibrant scenes of Harlem life, including bustling sidewalks, playgrounds filled with children, and the iconic New York City skylines. A poignant moment is Ellison's letter to his friend Albert Murray, where he states, "you know me. I have to have something between me and reality when I'm dealing with it most intensely" (00:17). This sentiment underscores Ellison's use of photography as a medium to process and represent his experiences.

Collaboration with Gordon Parks

Michal Ras Russo explains that the exhibition originated in 2020 when the Gordon Parks Foundation acquired approximately 100 of Ellison's photographs from a private collection. These works date back to the 1940s, a period when Ellison and Parks were both active in New York's artistic circles. Russo highlights the mutual mentorship between the two artists, with Parks influencing Ellison's photographic techniques and Ellison inspiring Parks to integrate writing with photography.

The "Document and Symbol" Manifesto

A significant aspect of their collaboration was Ellison's "Pictorial Problem" manifesto, a letter to Gordon Parks where Ellison challenges Parks to create photographs that serve as both document and symbol (04:35). This philosophy aimed to transcend mere illustration, enabling images and text to enhance each other’s impact. Russo elaborates on how their joint photographic excursions in Harlem resulted in a symbiotic creation process, where both artists influenced the visual and thematic elements of their work.

Ellison's Evolution as a Photographer

The conversation shifts to Ellison's broader photographic journey. Russo notes that while the exhibition focuses on the 1940s, Ellison's archived work at the Library of Congress spans multiple decades, reflecting his evolving artistic expression. After a devastating fire in 1967 destroyed much of his second novel manuscript, Ellison's photography became more introspective, utilizing Polaroid cameras to document his immediate environment in Manhattan. This shift mirrors his personal struggles and the introspective turn in his literary pursuits.

Professional Photography Work

Ellison's foray into professional photography is detailed through invoices found in the Library of Congress archives. These documents reveal Ellison's diverse assignments, including artist portraits for book covers, copy photography for museums, and even documenting automobile accidents. This period of freelance work lasted approximately two to three years until Ellison returned to his writing and personal projects.

Side by Side Exhibition with Gordon Parks

Russo underscores the importance of displaying Ellison's and Parks' works side by side in the exhibition. This arrangement highlights the reciprocal influence they had on each other and emphasizes the collaborative spirit of the era's artistic networks. By showcasing their photographs together, the exhibition celebrates the intertwined legacies of both artists and their contributions to challenging and redefining visual and literary narratives.

Legacy and Creative Networks

A pivotal moment in the discussion is the inclusion of a 1990 interview clip with Gordon Parks, where he reflects on his motivations for photography: "I wanted some way or another to express my indignation toward intolerance and discrimination that I had suffered in Kansas" (15:12). This quote encapsulates the shared ethos between Parks and Ellison—using art as a tool for social commentary and change. Russo emphasizes that their collaboration was rooted in a mutual desire to innovate and challenge existing representations in mass media, laying the groundwork for future generations of artists.

Upcoming Events at Gordon Parks Foundation

Before concluding, Michal Ras Russo highlights the ongoing and upcoming activities at the Gordon Parks Foundation. She mentions regular exhibitions featuring fellows and prize winners, as well as archival showcases. Additionally, the foundation's annual gala on May 20th will honor artists working at the intersection of art and social justice. Russo invites listeners to engage with the foundation’s programs and visit their headquarters in Pleasantville, accessible via a short train ride from New York City.

Conclusion

Alison Stewart wraps up the episode by reiterating the significance of the Ralph Ellison Photographer exhibition, which runs through February 7th at the Gordon Parks Foundation Gallery. She encourages listeners to explore the rich cultural tapestry depicted in Ellison's photographs and to appreciate the enduring legacy of his collaboration with Gordon Parks.

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Notable Quotes:

• Ralph Ellison to Albert Murray: "you know me. I have to have something between me and reality when I'm dealing with it most intensely" (00:17).
• Ellison's manifesto: "create photographs that act as both document and symbol" (04:35).
• Gordon Parks on his motivation: "I wanted some way or another to express my indignation toward intolerance and discrimination that I had suffered in Kansas" (15:12).

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This episode of All Of It offers a profound exploration of Ralph Ellison's photographic work, shedding light on his collaborative relationship with Gordon Parks and the lasting impact of their artistic innovations. Whether you're familiar with Ellison's literature or new to his photography, the episode provides a comprehensive and engaging overview of his contributions to American culture.

Transcript

[Unknown Announcer]

Listener support WNYC Studios.

[Alison Stewart]

This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. We continue our day of art, turning now to photography and to someone we usually think of as a master of the written word. Ralph Ellison is known as one of the most important American writers of the 20th century. With a seminal novel, invisible man, an exhibition at the Gordon Parks Foundation Gallery now shows another side to the artist as photographer. Photographs Ellison took in the 1940s feature throngs of Harlemites on a city sidewalk, children gathered on a playground, New York City skylines. Now, in a letter to writer and contemporary Albert Murray, Ellison requested his friend's advice on what camera equipment to buy, adding, quote, you know me. I have to have something between me and reality when I'm dealing with it most intensely. The exhibition also highlights Ellison's two collaborations with the photojournalist and filmmaker Gordon Parks himself, including a photo series inspired by Ellison's novel. The exhibition, Ralph Ellison photographer, runs through February 7th. Joining me now to discuss it are Michal Ras Russo, program director at the Gordon Parks Foundation. Michal, thank you for being with us.

[Michal Ras Russo]

Thank you for having me.

[Alison Stewart]

The exhibition features Ellison's photography from the 1940s. Why that period?

[Michal Ras Russo]

This actually goes back to 2020, when the foundation acquired from a private collection a group of about 100 photographs by Ralph Ellison. The photographs were mostly from the 1940s, a period when Ralph Ellison was living in New York and working in New York. The reason these were of particular interest to the foundation is because we know that this was the same time period that Ralph Ellison worked side by side with Gordon Parks. They were. They were introduced by mutual acquaintances, and they both had a deep interest in photography, and the two mentored each other. Gordon Parks was a kind of photographic mentor to Ralph Ellison, and Ralph Ellison, in many ways, introduced the notion of writing as an accompaniment to photography to Gordon Parks. So that is the kind of root of what's in the exhibition. But the story goes back a little bit further, at least from my discovery of Ralph Ellison, Ellison as a photographer, which, as you mentioned earlier, is about these two collaborations that they did, one in 1948 and one in 1952. So the two were intertwined throughout their careers.

[Alison Stewart]

Well, how did Ellison and Gordon Parks know each other?

[Michal Ras Russo]

So we believe that they likely met in Harlem through mutual acquaintances, other writers and artists, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes among them. There was a kind of network. There was a artistic network, a creative network of these individuals that were all thinking and working together and looking at each other's work. We know that Ralph Ellison, when he was at Harlem during this period. He moved to Harlem in the late 1930s and he was a struggling writer. But in order to supplement his income, he took on many odd jobs. He repaired and built audio equipment. And he also briefly worked as a professional photographer. And he was likely introd to Gordon Parks in the early 1940s, who by then had already established a name for himself as a photographer for several magazines, as a government photographer as well. And the two made friends and quickly began working alongside one another. And in 1948, Ralph Ellison was commissioned to do a story for the magazine of the Year. And it was intended to be a story about the La Fart Clinic in Harlem, which was then the first non segregated psychiatric clinic in New York City. And from the beginning, he envisioned that essay as being accompanied by photographs. And he selected Gordon Parks as the photographer to do the job.

[Alison Stewart]

But it's interesting though, he wrote sort of a manifesto, correct?

[Michal Ras Russo]

Exactly right. So before he even began work on the essay, he wrote a manifesto for Gordon Parks titled the Pictorial Problem. And in the first sentence of that manifesto, he challenges Gordon Parks to create photographs that act as both document and symbol. And what he meant by that is that he didn't want the photographs to simply act as illustrations accompanying the text. He wanted the photographs and the text to work alongside one another, to amplify each other for the photographs to do something the text couldn't, and vice versa. And this was the first step of the essay. And what we know from these survival contact sheets that both men took is that they went out on the streets of Harlem together and created photographs for this project together. There's actually, you see frames in the contact sheets of the same places by both of them. And there's actually one contact sheet where they exchange cameras and take photographs of one another. And the photographs were created. And then Ralph Ellison wrote the essay as a response to Gordon Parks's photographs.

[Alison Stewart]

Document. And what were the two words? It's document.

[Michal Ras Russo]

Document and symbol.

[Alison Stewart]

Document and symbol. Okay. It's interesting because the essay was eventually published in Harper's in 1960s. And let me read a sentence from the opening paragraph. Harlem is a ruin. Many of its ordinary aspects, its crimes, its casual violence, its crumbling buildings which littered areaways, ill smelling halls and vermin invaded rooms are indistinguishable from the distorted images that appear in dreams in which, like muggers haunting a lonely hall quiver in the waking mind with hidden and threatening significance. That's a powerful, powerful paragraph. Do Park's photographs capture the Vivid imagery of Ellison's words.

[Michal Ras Russo]

Absolutely. So what's interesting to note, I should also mention you noted that the essay wasn't published until the 60s. It was never published in 1948 as it was intended. The magazine actually declared bankruptcy right before that issue was set to come out. And so the manuscript and the photographs were lost for decades, decades. And it wasn't until 2016 that they were assembled and rediscovered, so to speak. But looking at the images that we believe were taken for the essays, you absolutely see Ellison's words come to life. And Ellison actually wrote captions for the photographs that do survive in manuscript form. And it's wonderful to hear the excerpt that you read, because one of the captions that was written, actually the very first caption Ellison writes is he describes Harlem as a physical ruin that for many, represents a psychological maze. And you see this in Gordon's. One of Gordon's most famous photographs. It's a kind of aerial view of Harlem where the outlines of the rooftop appear like a maze. And likewise, Ralph Ellison has a very similar photograph also taken from a high vantage point over Harlem. And in fact, in many of Ellison's own photographs of Harlem streets, of Harlem architecture, you see him playing with light and shadow and composition and perspective in a way where he is trying to evoke this idea of a city as a kind of psychological maze. And you could see, in that sense, how they're playing with what photography can do, especially within the space of a magazine, you know, how photography can challenge our way of thinking, how photography combined with text can kind of force us to think differently about what we consider to be familiar.

[Alison Stewart]

I'm speaking to Michal Ras Russo, program director of the Gordon Parks foundation, about the exhibition Ralph Ellison Photographer, currently running through February 7th at the Gordon Parks Foundation Gallery. What comes through to you about Ellison's photographs from the 1940s?

[Michal Ras Russo]

Well, what's really interesting is the way in which he uses photography as a form of note taking, as a kind of diaristic tool. And you could really see him thinking through his writing, through images. And that's such an interesting concept, this notion of image and text and how the two work alongside one another. And it's a really innovative way of thinking about how he approached his own writing and what made his writing so unique. And so what's absolutely refreshing is to see this sense of experimentation, the sense of somebody truly tinkering, to use one of Ellison's favorite words with this technological tool and seeing what it could do and seeing how it might open up his own thinking about how he wanted to represent ideas in his writing and more specifically, about how he wanted to challenge notions and representation of black American life through his art, through his artwork.

[Alison Stewart]

If you studied Ellison's photography from other parts of his life, not the 1940s, what's different about his work from this decade compared to other decades?

[Michal Ras Russo]

Absolutely. So the exhibition does only focus on the 1940s, because those are the group of photographs that are held in the collection of the Gordon Parks Foundation. But the impetus for the exhibition was actually a publication of a book by the same name, Ralph Elson Photographer, that was published by the foundation in partnership with Steidel and the Ralph and Fanny Ellison Charitable Trust. And the book does focus on the broader archive of Ellison's work that is held at the Library of Congress, where there are thousands and thousands of photographs spanning from the 1940s through the 1990s. And what's interesting is that when you look at the whole of his creative output, it kind of follows in tandem to the evolution of his writing. He published Invisible Man, 1952, and that was the only complete novel he published during his lifetime. And it is now well known that for the rest of his career, he worked on the second manuscript, the second novel that was never published. And he did publish several collections of essays. And what's really interesting is what happens after 1967 when there's a devastating fire at his home that burns a great majority of the transcript for his second novel. His photographic output drastically changes. He puts down his film camera, and he turns almost exclusively to the Polaroid camera, which provides instant images. And further, he photographs almost exclusively in the space of his home in Manhattan. He photographs his surroundings within his house. The plants he loved so much, the views outside his window, the changing seasons, these little sculptural compositions that he creates. And so you see him tinkering in a very different way, and you see it echoing so much of what we know about how he took a kind of introspective turn later in life as he was really struggling with his second novel.

[Alison Stewart]

You mentioned that Ralph Ellison worked as a freelance photographer from time to time.

[Michal Ras Russo]

Yes.

[Alison Stewart]

What was he photographing professionally?

[Michal Ras Russo]

So it's really interesting. So the reason we know he worked as a professional photographer is we actually. In the Library of Congress's holding is actually some of the invoices that he wrote for these commissions. The great, great majority of them were actually artists and writer portraits that he did for his fellow, for his friends, professional portraits that were used on book covers and so on. He also had Several assignments to do. Copy photography, for example, taking photographs of artworks for museums. Some more photojournalistic assignments. There's one invoice to document an automobile accident, for example. So he was really testing things out and trying a little bit. And this period, we're guessing, lasted about two or three years. When he was doing this in 1950, he dismantled his home darkroom and began traveling abroad. And that's when that professional work takes a pause.

[Alison Stewart]

I'm speaking to Mikel Roz Russo, programs director at the Gordon Parks foundation, about the exhibition Ralph Ellison Photographer, currently running through February 7th at the Gordon Parks Foundation Gallery. The exhibit features a selection of images made by Parks alongside images made by Ralph Ellison. Why did you want to show their work side by side?

[Michal Ras Russo]

I think it was very important. Well, clearly, because we're at the Gordon Parks foundation, it was really important for us to show the relationship between the two. But as a means of underscoring the importance of creative artistic networks in this time period and how so many of these artists work together, learned from one another and the ways in which their work together influenced the entirety of their career. So in the same way that Ellison learned so much about photography from Gordon Parks, Gordon Parks learned a great deal from Ralph Ellison. And we believe, I believe, that a huge part of why he often turned to writing throughout his career, even as a photojournalist, there's several instances where Gordon Parks himself writes articles to accompany his photographs for Life magazine is because of what he learned by working with Ellison. And this notion of creating images and text that act as both document and symbol, and this notion of artistic network, of collaboration is something that is incredibly important to us at the Gordon Parks Foundation. A big part of the work that we do is supporting the work of artists who are following in Gordon's footsteps and trying to foster the same kind of creative networks that he was a part of. So this was a wonderful way to showcase the origins of all of this.

[Alison Stewart]

I want to play a clip of Gordon parks from a 1990 interview explaining how he got into photography.

[Gordon Parks]

Oh, I suppose I wanted some way or another to express my indignation toward intolerance and discrimination that I had suffered in Kansas. And I realized after looking at the photographs in the Farm Security administration during the 1930s, and the farmers who were losing their lives and their life's work and the little kids and the mothers on the highways and the baby buggers in the Steinbeck era, I figured the great photography that FSA photographers were showing us in the magazines and so forth was to me a way of somehow speaking out against injustices.

[Alison Stewart]

What do you think the two men understood about each other? Other?

[Michal Ras Russo]

That's such a great question. I think they were both interested in challenging representation in mass media. Gordon Parks famously referred to photography as his weapon of choice. And they were both so keenly aware of how images and texts were being used in the press, press in mass media. And they were both really interested in challenging those ideas, in transforming, reinventing those approaches. There's a wonderful letter that Ellison wrote right around this time to Richard Wright where he actually says that he hopes that through his collaboration with Gordon Parks, they would create something new in photojournalism. So I think this desire to create something new was a driving force for both of them. And it's certainly evident in the remainder of their career and their legacies.

[Alison Stewart]

Before I let you go, what else do you have working at the foundation?

[Michal Ras Russo]

So we host several exhibitions a year at the Foundation's headquarters in Pleasantville, which is just a short train ride from New York City. Our headquarters just a few steps from the train station, so we encourage everybody to visit throughout. In the year ahead, we are featuring exhibitions of work by our fellows and our prize winners, as well as exhibitions of work drawn from our archive. May 20th is our annual gala where we will be honoring our fellows and our artists and several other great important figures that work at the intersection of art and social justice. So we encourage everybody to visit our website and see all the programs we have coming up.

[Alison Stewart]

Ralph Ellison, photographer, runs through February 7th at the Gordon Parks Foundation. Michal Ras Russo, program director, has been with us. Thanks for your time today.

[Michal Ras Russo]

Thank you for having me.

[Alison Stewart]

And that is all of it for today. We gave you some pretty good things to go see in New York City. I'll be back tomorrow. I appreciate you listening and I appreciate you and I will meet you back here.

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