[1][2] The photograph was staged in a Vancouver, British Columbia, studio, and is inspired by the prologue of the celebrated novel by African-American writer Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952).
The protagonist of the novel lives in a basement of a building in Harlem, where he has wired the entire ceiling with 1369 lights, whose electricity is illegally siphoned.
The photograph depicts the unnamed leading character of the novel in the comfort of his basement, with several commodities, poorly organized, but where the large amount of illumination stands out.
"[4]John McDonald stated that is one of the photographs, where "Wall has allowed himself the freedom of creating a scene based on his own visualisation of a text.
By clearly identifying the part of the novel to which he refers, Wall is inviting us to compare his version with the written word, as if he were the director of a film.