Speirs Major

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man was a watershed in the history of American literature. It was one the the first novels to treat the black experience in 20th Century America as a fully human experience. To mark the publication of Invisible Man in 1952, Life magazine released a photo-story titled “A Man Becomes Invisible.” Gordon Parks, Life’s first African-American staff-photographer, and friend of Ellison took the photos, many of which have become iconic images of the era.

In the adjacent composite photo, Parks visualises the juxtaposition of light and dark by combining a night vista of the city with a careful reconstruction of the basement illuminated with 1,369 lights as described in the novel's prologue. "I doubt if there is a brighter spot in all of New York than this hole of mine," the narrator claimed, "and I do not exclude Broadway".