Roy DeCarava
Street photographers–and DeCarava has been among New York’s most talented for half a century–are not known for exceptional printing. Theirs is an aesthetic of coincidence, of the uncanny in casually observed moments of urban life shining through an unobtrusive technique. But DeCarava’s prints–soon moving on to Los Angeles, one of eight destinations for the show, which originated at New York’s Museum of Modern Art–are remarkable for two breaches of the traditions of black-and-white printing. He does much of his best work in the deepest shades of gray, rendering the documentary print virtually an expressionist form. And often his pictures are not in sharp focus but blur slightly with the subject’s movement. Both inflections of the medium bend it toward the photographer’s purposes and emotional tone. His subject is often hard–given the touchiness of discussions of race–but his treatment of his subjects is humanely soft.
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Before DeCarava depicted children of his own, a recurrent theme was lone men with small children–an unattached man’s display of tenderness, perhaps. His relation to his subjects often seems nurturing, sheltering. The splendid 1953 image Joe Holding Baby–the baby held upright as if to be shown the world glimpsed through the camera, and guarded from it–is a male Madonna-and-child image all the more striking for the Madonna being black: in this era, toughness seemed a requirement for depictions of American black men. Joe and the baby both gaze clearly out through the print’s enveloping shadows–their halo.
The colors of “black” skin are an abiding concern in DeCarava’s photographs, revealed through the insistent darkness of his prints and through their subjects: he photographed half a century of daily life in the black communities of New York, his lifelong home. DeCarava has frequently spoken out against the underrepresentation of black artists, including himself, in prominent cultural institutions; he once ran a gallery, and in the 60s he helped found the ongoing Kamoinge workshop for black photographers. Still, it seems insufficient to label this a show of “black photography.” The pictures record essentially private human concerns–love, work, and play–as they’re enacted in public in the communities in which DeCarava has lived.
When I asked DeCarava about the origins of The Sweet Flypaper of Life, he recalled that editorial decisions were very much in the hands of the older Hughes, who had proposed the project. DeCarava offered a set of some 500 prints and did not interfere as Hughes selected and arranged 141 of them. These the poet used as inspiration for his story of a day in the life of Harlem as seen through the eyes of the kindly Sister Mary. Like the photographer coming out from behind the camera, she leaves her lookout at the window to appear herself only on the closing page.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Man Coming Up Subway Stairs.
