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"An incredible wonder you can almost cradle in your palm"

“Mississippi Freedom Marcher, Washington, D.C., 1963 has the weight of a monument."

Enduring Vision- Roy DeCarava Six Decades of American Photography

Explore the Exhibition

September 5—October 26, 2019

Roy DeCarava: Light Break

 concentrates on DeCarava’s photographs of musical subjects. At Zwirner in Chelsea, the much larger 

 treats the full range of his interests, from the civil rights movement to images of urban workers, landscapes and parks. Totaling nearly 150 photographs, this is a museum-worthy undertaking seen in the more accessible, intimate spaces of the commercial gallery—the best of both worlds.

DeCarava’s work is itself the best of both worlds: visually rigorous yet incalculably sensitive to the human predicament and the psychology of everyday life, especially concerning but not limited to African-Americans. He studied painting and printmaking, before committing to the camera, which may have helped him enrich his new medium in terms of both appearance and meaning. DeCarava’s reputation began to grow in the early 1950s, based on his sympathetic portrayals of the residents of Harlem, where he was born in 1919 and raised by a single mother, and of the numerous musical luminaries pursuing blues or jazz, this country’s first modern art. These included Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, who figure in the uptown show."

Concurrent exhibitions of Roy DeCarava's work are on view in New York through October 26, 2019: 

 is on view at 533 West 19th Street, and 

A silver gelatin print by Roy DeCarava, titled Curved branch, dated 1994.

The New York Times, Critic's Pick by Roberta Smith

Roy DeCarava: "Visually Rigorous yet Incalculably Sensitive"

, ending in the early 1980s, the choice of whether, and how, to make art ‘black’ was a lively issue. And the show—organized by Mark Godfrey and Zoe Whitley, curators at the Tate, and overseen in New York by Ashley James, an assistant curator at the Brooklyn Museum — is, among many other things, about the varied and inventive solutions artists came up with.

Certain early responses feel almost counterintuitive. In the same years that [Norman] Lewis was injecting topical stories into abstract painting, Roy DeCarava was experimenting with making photographic portraiture abstract. The face of the young woman in his famous image 

Mississippi Freedom Marcher, Washington, D.C., 1963 

has the weight of a monument. But a shot of John Coltrane from the same year has an aura-like blur, and a picture called 

 is a featureless glow, undefined by race or gender."

A detail of a photograph by Roy DeCarava, titled Mississippi Freedom Marcher, Washington, D.C., dated 1963. 

March 19, 2019

The Sweet Flypaper of Life, Roy DeCarava and Langston Hughes

 by Roy DeCarava & Langston Hughes.
A classic that effortlessly weaves text and image, fact and fiction, the real and the imagined...It is a picture book that should be read from beginning to end, and that takes you in and out of a world that is melodramatic, joyful and heartbreaking all at the same time."

A spread from The Sweet Flypaper of Live, by Roy DeCarava and Langston Hughes.

"A world that is melodramatic, joyful and heartbreaking all at the same time"

Join Sherry Turner DeCarava for an evening celebrating 

 and writer Langston Hughes that was first published in 1955, the book captures daily life in Harlem through a combination of words and pictures. Widely considered a classic of photographic visual literature,

 was reprinted by public demand several times. This fourth printing is the first authorized English-language edition since 1983, and includes an afterword by the publisher, Sherry Turner DeCarava, tracing the history and continuing importance of the publication.

New York | Shakespeare & Co., 2020 Broadway

The cover of a book, titled, The Sweet Flypaper of Life.

David Zwirner is an art gallery with locations in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris and Hong Kong. We present physical and online exhibitions, podcasts, books, and more.