Hunter College Professor Who Photographed the People of Harlem Dies at 89
When, as a budding photographer, Roy DeCarava applied for a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1952, his proposal stated: "I want to show the strength, the wisdom, the dignity of the Negro people. Not the famous and the well known, but the unknown and the unnamed, thus revealing the roots from which springs the greatness of all human beings."
That year he became the first African-American photographer to receive a Guggenheim, and he spent 57 more years advancing his goals. He was still pursuing them last month just before he died, six weeks shy of his 90th birthday.
Mr. DeCarava, one of the most celebrated of American photographers, taught photography at the City University of New York's Hunter College from 1975 until his death after a brief illness.
A distinguished professor of art at Hunter since 1988, Mr. DeCarava was acclaimed for his images of Harlem and of jazz musicians. He won the National Medal of Arts in 2006.
He drew most of his subject matter from everyday life in Harlem. As he told The Chronicle in 1997, his art reflected his sense of responsibility to black Americans: "It was unjust that they should go through life unseen."
On a Facebook page created in Mr. DeCarava's honor, former students have thanked him both for lessons in photography—for instance, his instruction that if you have to use a zoom lens, then you're not close enough to the scene to capture it—and for broader guidance. He taught, as one former student puts it, "that to shoot life, you have to live it."
In images that were as artistic as they were documentary, Mr. DeCarava depicted neighbors singing, workmen trudging home, and musicians playing, embracing, or merely walking from the stage. His subjects' purpose, perseverance, and elegance despite dire circumstances embodied "a life force that each of us has, a will to live and a will to be here," he said...
Read entire article at The Chronicle of Higher Education
That year he became the first African-American photographer to receive a Guggenheim, and he spent 57 more years advancing his goals. He was still pursuing them last month just before he died, six weeks shy of his 90th birthday.
Mr. DeCarava, one of the most celebrated of American photographers, taught photography at the City University of New York's Hunter College from 1975 until his death after a brief illness.
A distinguished professor of art at Hunter since 1988, Mr. DeCarava was acclaimed for his images of Harlem and of jazz musicians. He won the National Medal of Arts in 2006.
He drew most of his subject matter from everyday life in Harlem. As he told The Chronicle in 1997, his art reflected his sense of responsibility to black Americans: "It was unjust that they should go through life unseen."
On a Facebook page created in Mr. DeCarava's honor, former students have thanked him both for lessons in photography—for instance, his instruction that if you have to use a zoom lens, then you're not close enough to the scene to capture it—and for broader guidance. He taught, as one former student puts it, "that to shoot life, you have to live it."
In images that were as artistic as they were documentary, Mr. DeCarava depicted neighbors singing, workmen trudging home, and musicians playing, embracing, or merely walking from the stage. His subjects' purpose, perseverance, and elegance despite dire circumstances embodied "a life force that each of us has, a will to live and a will to be here," he said...