Despite their divergent aesthetics and politics, novelists Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison found common ground through photography. Viewing the medium as a means of putting a spotlight on the few institutions dedicated to reducing systemic inequality for African Americans, their spirit of collaboration is particularly evident in their work with photographers—including a young Gordon Parks—around the Lafargue Clinic, the first desegregated psychiatric facility in New York City. University of Pennsylvania English Professor and Hutchins Fellow Jean-Christophe Cloutier unearths this history told through a photographic archive of rare and unpublished images preserved in collections held in the Library of Congress and the Gordon Parks Foundation.

This program is presented in partnership with the Wolf Humanities Center at the University of Pennsylvania.