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.