After ‘Invisible Man’ by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue 1999-2000 — by Jeff Wall

March 10, 2007, 1:11 pm; posted by
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invisible.jpg
When it comes to art, I usually don’t get out of bed for anything less than Norman Rockwell or a new U2 album. This is not a criticism of art, but rather a criticism of me, for not being able to absorb it well enough. Most art simply doesn’t move me.

But I am captivated, singularly, by this work of Jeff Wall, a man who combines photography with theatre and oftentimes literature. I took the following description of the image (below) from the Tate Modern website (no relation). I have already invested a good many minutes staring at it, planning to budget a good many more to it in the future.

Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man centers on a black man who, during a street riot, falls into a forgotten room in the cellar of a large apartment building in New York and decides to stay there, living hidden away. The novel begins with a description of the protagonist’s subterranean home, emphasizing the ceiling covered with 1,369 illegally connected light bulbs. There is a parallel between the place of light in the novel and Wall’s own photographic practice. Ellison’s character declares: ‘Without light I am not only invisible, but formless as well.’ Wall’s use of a light source behind his pictures is a way of bringing his own ‘invisible’ subjects to the fore, so giving form to the overlooked in society.


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