ADAA: The Art Show

Roy DeCarava

David Zwirner is pleased to participate in The Art Show 2021 with a solo presentation of photographs by Roy DeCarava (1919–2009), curated by Sherry Turner DeCarava, Chief Curator and Director of The DeCarava Archives. 
 
Roy DeCarava consistently met the challenge of photography, a medium of both implacable strength and modern tendentiousness, during his lifelong artistic career. Beyond the crossroads of culture and mindset, he plumbed the depths of a subtle but immanent connection to and from his subjects. Embedded in what may appear to be darkness, DeCarava’s photographs often reveal an underlying, dreamlike universe of silver gelatin, shimmering in the hands of a true master. He embraced an emotional imperative, compelling in his work a fundamental bonding of life and art. This selection of photographs invites the audience to discover his creation of what can be called a visual resonance, opening the viewer to an essential revelatory experience. Extending beyond the dominance of formal and stylistic considerations, DeCarava freely created from a place of personal poetics grounded in a beautiful reality, a territory that he claimed for his work and that represents an enduring contribution to American culture and art.

– Sherry Turner DeCarava

 
Text © 2021 The DeCarava Archives 
 
Image: Roy DeCarava, Couple and lady, Bryant Park, 1963