Off on My Own (Harlem, New York), from the series "Harlem is Nowhere"

Harlem is Nowhere paired photographs by Gordon Parks with an essay by writer Ralph Ellison to explore Black life in Harlem. Ellison wrote, “Many of [Harlem’s] ordinary aspects (its crimes, its casual violence, its crumbling buildings with littered areaways, ill-smelling halls, and vermin-invaded rooms) are indistinguishable from the distorted images that appear in dreams.” Here, the large black bands that sweep across the composition render the scene surreal. Street pole, doorway, and facade become indiscernible except in relation to each other, and the silhouetted figure is cast as the average Harlemite, “off on one’s own.”