Roy DeCarava, one of the greatest art photographers whose pictures of everyday life in Harlem helped clarify the African American experience for a wider audience, has died at the age of 89. He was a Jamaican American photographer who spent much of his life documenting his native Harlem. Since the late 1940s Roy DeCarava has created visually acute, thought-provoking images from unexpected places.
Some of his work you can see here:
Roy DeCarava was born in Harlem as the only child of an immigrant, who separated from DeCarava’s father shortly after his birth. DeCarava lived in Harlem through many decades of important changes and to survive he began working at an early age. He continued to hold odd jobs throughout most of his career as a photographer. As a child he shined shoes and delivered newspapers and ice to make ends meet, while his mother, an amateur photographer, made sure that his artistic talents were nurtured with music lessons and drawing supplies.
Avoiding flash whenever he could, he shot mainly in black and white and created highly impressionistic images. Some critics have seen his black and white photos as somehow representative of his views about the stark social divisions in American life. He loved to capture spontaneous moments with his 35-millimeter camera, that allowed him freedom to roam. He was well known for his candid shots of jazz musicians.
He did not ignore the problems of the black community though he usually addressed them in subtle ways. In the early 1960s, DeCarava’s work grew more tough-minded in its response to racial discrimination, notably in pictures of laborers in New York’s garment district and of civil rights protests. Once DeCarava told The New York Times: “One of the things that got to me was that I felt that black people were not being portrayed in a serious and in an artistic way.” One of his best known photographs shows a young woman in a long white gown and a corsage who stands in rubble outside a tenement house. She is in sunlight, facing shadows. The image raises obvious questions about her future.
A life-long New Yorker, DeCarava almost always has photographed close to home. Later he moved from journalism to teaching in the late 1960s. He married art historian Sherry Turner in 1970 and they had daughters, Laura, Susan and Wendy.
Like
2 comments