“Invisible Man: Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison in Harlem, which accompanies an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, collects and contextualizes one of the most significant archival finds of mid-century American culture: their hitherto lost 1948 collaboration—an essay by Ellison with photographs by Parks that offers a gritty panorama of Harlem life… In the book's major essay, literary scholar Jean-Christophe Cloutier of the University of Pennsylvania painstakingly reconstructs the history of this collaboration and demonstrates that, contrary to what had been previously assumed, it had in fact gone as far as the layout stage—and thus, Ellison's captions are finally matched to Parks's photographs in the book.” -- Paul Devlin — BOMB Magazine

“Illuminating both the parallels and divergences between Parks's and Ellison's work, this show promises a new perspective on the pair's joint use of photography during the civil rights movement, a period of heightened attention to the rhetoric of images.” -- Solveig Nelson ― Artforum

”Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison, two of the 20th century’s most celebrated artists, shared a vision of what it meant to be black in the US. Parks, a photographer and filmmaker, and Ellison, a novelist and essayist, collaborated twice on projects that revealed, through words and images, what they believed to be essential aspects of the African American condition. Although the collaborations differed in form, the sensibility that animated them was the same, and so was the setting ― Harlem. -- John Edwin Mason ― Hyperallergic

”… brings together the important collaboration between two artistic geniuses…the relevance of social change has never rung so true.” -- Liz Ronk ― Time, Best Photobooks of 2016