Roy DeCarava: the sound i saw
Publisher: First Print Press/David Zwirner Books
Publish Date: 2019
Texts by Radiclani Clytus and Sherry Turner DeCarava
Roy DeCarava’s the sound i saw is the pictorial equivalent of jazz. Here, the visionary photographer turns his gaze on legendary jazz icons Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, and Billie Holiday, among many others.
“This is a book about people, about jazz, and about things. The work between its covers tries to present images for the head and for the heart and, like its subject matter, is particular, subjective, and individual,” writes DeCarava. A master of poetic contemplation and of sensual tonalities in black and white, DeCarava is, above all, a photographer of people. A member of the post–World War II generation that sought a new modernist vocabulary, he was first recognized for his innovative images of life in Harlem (the subject of The Sweet Flypaper of Life, his 1955 collaboration with poet Langston Hughes) and extraordinary portraits of jazz musicians. It is these two themes—New York and jazz—interwoven and inseparable, that are the ostensible subject of the sound i saw. However, the seemingly casual yet deeply felt compositions and the rich, gradient tones of DeCarava’s photographs stir emotions that resonate far beyond one neighborhood and one era.
Conceived, designed, written, and made as an artist maquette by DeCarava in the early 1960s, the sound i saw went unpublished for almost half a century until it was printed by Phaidon in 2001. At its core is a visual and philosophical journey to plumb the meaning of a creative life. The artist’s intention in proposing a complex relationship between vision and music moves his comprehensive, decade-long reflection to the status of a magnum opus. This new edition, copublished by First Print Press and David Zwirner Books, includes new scholarship by Radiclani Clytus and reflections by Sherry Turner DeCarava.
Details
Publisher: First Print Press/David Zwirner Books
Artist: Roy DeCarava
Contributors: Sherry Turner DeCarava, Radiclani Clytus
Publication Date: 2019
ISBN: 9781644230107
Retail: $80 | £65
Status: Available
Designer: Katy Homans
Printer: Trifolio, Verona
Binding: Hardcover
Dimensions: 10 ¼ × 13 ¼ | 26 × 33.7 cm
Pages: 228
Reproductions: 201 tritone, 9 color
Artist and Contributors
Roy DeCarava
Over the course of six decades, American artist Roy DeCarava (1919–2009) produced a singular collection of black-and-white photographs of modern life that combine formal acuity with an intimate and deeply human treatment of his subject matter. Grounded by a unified theory of the visual plane, his work displays a subtle mastery of tonal and spatial elements and devotion to the medium of photography as a means of artistic expression.
Sherry Turner DeCarava
Sherry Turner DeCarava is an art historian, curator, and independent scholar in the fields of traditional arts and contemporary American photography. She has taught or lectured extensively at universities and museums, including Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY), Brooklyn Museum, and Rockefeller University. Serving as the executive director, the principal focus of her professional career has been the development of The DeCarava Archives, which supports exhibition and scholarly research projects related to the work of her late husband Roy DeCarava. She is the author of two definitive texts on his photography, including that in Roy DeCarava: A Retrospective published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1996) and in Roy DeCarava: Photographs, a monograph published by the Friends of Photography/Ansel Adams Trust (1981). Awarded the Prix de la Photographie by Les Rencontres de la Photographie, the Arles Center for Culture, in its annual survey of international photography, her 1981 text was lauded as the best photo/text collaboration of the year. In 2014 she initiated First Print Press, beginning a process to republish classic Roy DeCarava books, while bringing new photographic projects into print.
Radiclani Clytus
Radiclani Clytus is an academic and independent filmmaker who works at the intersections of new media and nineteenth-century American literature and visual culture. He has written extensively on transatlantic abolitionist imagery and is the editor of two compilations of prose by Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa: Blue Notes (2000) and Condition Red (2017). As a documentary filmmaker, Clytus has received commissions from Luhring Augustine, Steinway & Sons, and the United States National Park Service. His first film, Looks of a Lot, premiered at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and his latest feature, Grammar, explores the interdisciplinary language of creative expression. He is the principal of RoundO Films.
$80