Biography provided by Focal press
 
Provided an insiders look into black Harlem life with a formal grace that blends social and personal identity. His understated approach relies on examining the small impediments that define people's lives. His prints, whether of jazz musicians or tenement life, show the competing dynamism of darkness and light and the visible physical and invisible psychological forces that affect people. It contextualizes the racism that excluded most African Americans from the post-nuclear boom in the United States. First African American to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship (1952). Came into the public eye for The Sweet Flypaper of Life (1955), in collaboration with writer Langston Hughes. Opened A Photographer's Gallery in New York City (1955), an early effort to gain recognition for photography as an art. Ran the Kamoinge Workshop for young black photographers (1963-1966) and later taught at New York's Hunter College.
 
(Author: RH)
 
Michael Peres (Editor-in-Chief), 2007, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography, 4th edition, (Focal Press) [ISBN-10: 0240807405, ISBN-13: 978-0240807409] (Used with permission)
 
Wikipedia
 
Roy Rudolph DeCarava (December 9, 1919 - October 27, 2009) was an American artist. DeCarava received early critical acclaim for his photography, initially engaging and imaging the lives of African Americans and jazz musicians in the communities where he lived and worked. Over a career that spanned nearly six decades, DeCarava came to be known as a founder in the field of black and white fine art photography, advocating for an approach to the medium based on the core value of an individual, subjective creative sensibility, which was separate and distinct from the "social documentary" style of many predecessors.