The first time I saw Jeff Wall’s photography, I was flipping through an issue of W Magazine. His work didn’t cross my mind again until years later, when I was staring at the glowing ceiling on the Gramercy Park Hotel’s rooftop…
After “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue 1999–2000
Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man centres 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, emphasising 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. (via)
