Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison’s Collaborative Visions of Harlem

John Edwin Mason | Hyperallergic | 19th August 2016

“Damage imagery”- the idea that black Americans were psychologically damaged by segregation – was a major debate in postwar America. Acclaimed novelist Ralph Ellison and renowned photojournalist Gordon Parks contributed with two illustrated essays about Harlem, “a place of outward suffering and internal turmoil”. Neither piece was published but one has now been reassembled. A short video (2 min) is here.