Parting Glance: Roy DeCarava, 1919-2009:
“Roy DeCarava, who turned Harlem into his canvas, has died.
Sherry Turner DeCarava – Roy DeCarava
A slide show of Mr. DeCarava’s work is on the Lens blog.
by Randy Kennedy
Roy DeCarava, the child of a single mother in Harlem who turned that neighborhood into his canvas and became one of the most important photographers of his generation by chronicling its people and its jazz giants, has died. He was 89.
His death was announced by Sherry Turner DeCarava, his wife and an art historian who wrote frequently about his work.
Mr. DeCarava trained to be a painter, but while using a camera to gather images for his printmaking work, he began to gravitate toward photography, in part because of its immediacy but also because of the limitations he saw all around him for a black artist in a segregated nation. ‘A black painter, to be an artist,’ he once said, ‘had to join the white world or not function — had to accept the values of white culture.'”
(Via NYT > Arts.)