Adam Bradley: My name is Adam Bradley. I’m a professor of English at UCLA. You’re looking at an image by the photographer Jeff Wall, which drew inspiration from Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel.
The novel tells the story of a young Black man, confronting the realities of a segregated America. The prologue to Invisible Man introduces us to the novel's protagonist who inhabits what he calls his “underground hole,” a long forgotten basement. Wall’s image describes this setting. He overwhelms the image with the clutter of everyday objects: dirty dishes, clothing, an old phonograph, and the countless filament light bulbs hanging from the ceiling—perhaps even the 1,369 that Ellison details in the book. The main character is seated in a folding chair. He's hunched over at work, writing a book, telling us his life story and writing his way into being.
I’d like to read a passage from the prologue that introduces Ellison’s concept of invisibility:
“Perhaps you’ll think it's strange that an invisible man should need light, desire light, love light, without light, I’m not only invisible, but formless as well. And to be unaware of one’s form is to live a death. I myself did not become alive until I discovered my invisibility.”
Ellison was captivated both by the history and the mystery of American life. It’s a novel that's set in the past, grappling with racism and white supremacy. It’s a novel, in other words, of its time, as well as our own. I hope people who see Jeff Wall’s remarkable image in tribute to Ellison’s novel will be curious enough to pick up Invisible Man, to see what Ellison achieved, to see what Wall saw, and to see what they can see for themselves.