Roy DeCarava

Roy DeCarava was an American artist, photographer, and educator known for his groundbreaking photographs of African Americans revealing a unique sensitivity and intimacy. Born in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood in 1919, DeCarava graduated with honors from the Textile High School in 1938. He then found work in the poster division of the Works Progress Administration, where he briefly made prints and paintings. DeCarava was then admitted to the Cooper Union, and studied there until 1940, leaving to attend classes at the Harlem Community Art Center and George Washington Carver Art School, where his professional contemporaries included Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, Norman Lewis, and Charles White, among others. 

In the 1940s and 1950s, DeCarava worked as a freelance photographer for magazines such as Fortune, Newsweek, and Sports Illustrated. However, it was his personal work that made him a groundbreaking figure in the world of photography. In 1955, DeCarava published his first book, The Sweet Flypaper of Life, a collaboration with Langston Hughes that featured DeCarava's photographs and Hughes's text. The book was a critical and commercial success, and it remains a seminal work of American photography.

DeCarava’s first solo exhibition of photography was held in 1950 at Forty-Fourth Street Gallery in New York. There he met photographer and director of the Museum of Modern Art’s new department of photography, Edward Steichen. Steichen purchased three of DeCarava’s images for the museum’s collection. In 1952, with Steichen’s support, DeCarava became the first African American photographer to win a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. The one-year grant enabled DeCarava to focus full time on photography and to complete the project that would eventually result in The Sweet Flypaper of Life. Steichen also included DeCarava in a number of group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, including The Family of Man (1955), which traveled internationally through 1965. 

From 1955 to 1957, DeCarava operated A Photographer’s Gallery on West 84th Street in Manhattan. The gallery presented his own accumulating works in a solo context while also mounting twelve exhibitions of emerging American photographers, helping to advance the artistic consideration of the field. 

In addition to his photography work, DeCarava was a respected educator. In 1975, he joined the faculty at Hunter College, and was named Distinguished Professor of Art of the City University of New York in 1988. He taught at Hunter for more than 20 years and was a mentor to his many students. 

During his lifetime, he was the recipient of numerous awards including a Master of Photography Award from the International Center of Photography, New York; a Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement from the National Arts Club; and a National Medal of Arts, the highest civilian honor awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts and presented by the President of the United States.

DeCarava’s photographs are held in many public collections including the Art Institute of Chicago; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts; George Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museum of Modern Art; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.