Reviewed by:

• Ralph Ellison: Photographer by Michal Raz-Russo and John F. Callahan
• Lauren Walsh

Ralph Ellison, who is often characterized as the author of one of the greatest twentieth-century American novels, Invisible Man, spoke these words in a conversation (titled “A Completion of Personality”) with the writer John Hersey: “I might conceive of a thing aurally, but to realize it you have to make it vivid. . . . That is the condition of fiction, I think. Here is where sound becomes sight and sight becomes sound.”

For decades, critics have described Ellison as not only a masterful word-smith but a “thinker-tinker,” the descriptor itself borrowed from Invisible Man, a self-attributed moniker offered in the Prologue by the narrator. Ellison was a thinker who grappled with history, race, sociology, culture, and so much more; and he was also a tinkerer with hi-fi audio, photography, computers, and beyond. In fact, to label him simply a “tinkerer” is an under-statement, as a new book by the Ralph and Fanny Ellison Charitable Trust in partnership with the Gordon Parks Foundation and German publishing house Steidl makes clear. Ralph Ellison: Photographer (copyright 2022, released in April 2023), a lush publication with nearly 150 rarely-before-seen photos by Ellison himself, opens a new way of viewing how this inimitable author perceived the world around, offering insight into Ellison’s literary approach and, more broadly, his artistic vision of American life.

As Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr. explains in the Foreword, Ellison and the vaunted photographer Gordon Parks were friends and sometimes collaborators, each influencing the other’s outlook and output. They joined forces [End Page 251] together on two projects, which became the basis for a 2016 exhibition (with a superb catalog), “Invisible Man: Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison in Harlem,” at the Art Institute of Chicago. That exhibition was curated by Michal Raz-Russo, the Gordon Parks Foundation programs director, and it paved the way toward Ralph Ellison: Photographer, which was overseen by Raz-Russo with John F. Callahan, Ellison’s literary executor. Both Raz-Russo and Callahan, alongside the Gordon Parks Foundation’s executive director Kunhardt and literary critic Adam Bradley, have meaningful essays in this book.

These four individuals help frame the photographs; their contextualizing texts give background and set-up to understanding the images that appear in the subsequent pages. As Kunhardt writes, “Over careers that spanned more than half a century, through their words and pictures Ellison and Parks shared the goal of representing Black life as integral to, not separate from, the breadth of American culture.” Callahan adds that in response to Richard Wright’s book 12 Million Black Voices, Ellison admitted “ ‘brooding over the photographs . . . reading it [the book] and experiencing the pictures.’ At length he simply declared, ‘We are not the numbed, but the seething’—a remarkable affirmation of his unguarded, vulnerable writer’s response to the pitch of emotion aroused in him by the art of photography.”

After establishing Ellison’s interest in photography, his connection to evolving movements in social, literary, and artistic spaces, and his desire to capture a vision of Black American life that pushed back on dominant narratives, the book segues to the photos themselves, an arrangement curated in two parts: the first, Ellison’s photos from the 1940s and ’50s, including portraiture and street photography; and second, his images from the 1970s until his death in 1994, more heavily focused on his private space in Manhattan and almost exclusively Polaroids.

All told, the book encompasses the breadth of an advanced amateur photographer over decades, including black-and-white and color photography, 35mm, medium- and large-format work, and of course Polaroid, in addition to a small selection of images from a brief period when Ellison worked as a professional freelance photographer (often creating author portraits for book jackets, from approximately 1948 to 1950).

This is a proper photo book insofar as it is beautifully designed and sumptuously printed. Specific images beckon the eye: There is a crowd of...

审阅者：

• 拉尔夫·埃里森：摄影师：Michal Raz-Russo 和 John F. Callahan
• 劳伦沃尔什

拉尔夫·埃里森（ Ralph Ellison）经常被认为是二十世纪美国最伟大的小说之一《隐形人》的作者，他在与作家约翰·赫西（John Hersey）的一次对话（题为“人格的完善”）中说出了这些话：“我可能会认为听觉上描述某件事物，但要意识到它，你必须使它生动。。。。我认为这就是小说的状况。在这里，声音变成了视觉，视觉变成了声音。”

几十年来，评论家不仅将埃里森形容为一位高超的文字大师，而且是一位“思想家修补匠”，这个形容词本身借用自“隐形人” ，这是叙述者在序言中提供的一个自我归属的绰号。埃里森是一位思考历史、种族、社会学、文化等等的思想家。他还是高保真音响、摄影、计算机等领域的修补匠。事实上，简单地给他贴上“修补匠”的标签是一种轻描淡写的说法，拉尔夫和范妮·埃里森慈善信托基金与戈登·帕克斯基金会和德国施泰德出版社合作出版的一本新书明确地表明了这一点。《拉尔夫·埃里森：摄影师》（版权 2022，2023 年 4 月发行）是一本内容丰富的出版物，收录了埃里森本人的近 150 张前所未见的照片，开辟了一种新的方式来观察这位独特的作家如何感知周围的世界，提供对埃里森文学的见解更广泛地说，是他对美国生活的艺术视野。

正如小彼得·昆哈特 (Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr.) 在前言中所解释的那样，埃里森和备受赞誉的摄影师戈登·帕克斯 (Gordon Parks) 是朋友，有时甚至是合作者，彼此影响着对方的观点和作品。他们联手[完第 251 页]两个项目，这成为 2016 年在芝加哥艺术学院举办的“隐形人：戈登·帕克斯和拉尔夫·埃里森在哈莱姆区”展览（附有精美的目录）的基础。该展览由戈登·帕克斯基金会项目总监米哈尔·拉兹·拉索 (Michal Raz-Russo) 策划，并为《拉尔夫·埃里森：摄影师》铺平了道路，该展览由拉兹·拉索和埃里森的文学执行人约翰·F·卡拉汉 (John F. Callahan) 共同监督。拉兹-罗素和卡拉汉，以及戈登·帕克斯基金会的执行董事昆哈特和文学评论家亚当·布拉德利，都在本书中发表了有意义的文章。

这四个人帮助拍摄照片；他们的上下文文本为理解后续页面中出现的图像提供了背景和设置。正如昆哈特所写，“在跨越半个多世纪的职业生涯中，埃里森和帕克斯通过他们的文字和图片实现了共同的目标，即把黑人生活描绘成美国文化的一部分，而不是与之分离。” 卡拉汉补充说，在回应理查德·赖特的《一千二百万黑人之声》一书时，埃里森承认“对这些照片感到沉思”。。。阅读它[这本书]并体验这些图片。” 最后，他简单地宣称，“我们不是麻木的，而是沸腾的”——这是对他的毫无防备、脆弱的作家对摄影艺术所激发的强烈情感的反应的非凡肯定。

在确立了埃里森对摄影的兴趣、他与社会、文学和艺术空间中不断发展的运动的联系，以及他捕捉美国黑人生活的愿景并推翻主流叙事的愿望之后，这本书继续讨论照片本身，这是一种精心策划的安排分两部分：第一部分是埃里森20世纪40年代和50年代的照片，包括肖像画和街头摄影；其次，他从 20 世纪 70 年代到 1994 年去世的照片，更多地集中在他在曼哈顿的私人空间，几乎全是宝丽来照片。

总而言之，这本书涵盖了高级业余摄影师几十年来的知识，包括黑白和彩色摄影、35 毫米、中画幅和大画幅作品，当然还有宝丽莱照片，此外还精选了一小部分来自埃里森曾短暂担任专业自由摄影师（大约从 1948 年到 1950 年，经常为书籍封面创作作者肖像）。

这是一本设计精美、印刷精美的写真集。具体图像引人注目：有一群......