Exceptional Works: Roy DeCarava

“Art is the ultimate in communication because art aspires to be the absolute only consideration, and therefore as pure, as pristine and as valuable as possible.”

—Roy DeCarava

Roy DeCarava

Graduation, 1949

Silver gelatin print

Print: 16 x 20 inches (40.6 x 50.8 cm)
Framed: 22 1/4 x 27 1/8 inches (56.5 x 68.9 cm)

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This viewing room presents a rare large-scale print of Graduation (1949), one of Roy DeCarava’s most iconic images. DeCarava honed his printing technique to produce rich tonal gradations, enabling him to explore a full spectrum of light- and dark-gray values more akin to a painterly mode of expression. Each print is distinct as a result of the artist’s attention to this process.

Over the course of six decades, the 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. As the curator Zoé Whitley notes, “DeCarava ranks without question among the great American modernists of the post–World War II era.”

Roy DeCarava and Langston Hughes, The Sweet Flypaper of Life, 1955

Graduation first appeared in The Sweet Flypaper of Life, an acclaimed book published in collaboration with the poet Langston Hughes in 1955 that is now considered a classic of photographic visual literature.

Graduation foregrounds DeCarava’s innate sense of composition and ability to frame images in everyday situations. Light cuts across the center of the picture plane as a lone figure, dressed in stark contrast to her surroundings, traverses the divide. This print bears many of the formal hallmarks that DeCarava pioneered, including an elevated vantage point and a rich gradient of tonalities achieved through the artist’s distinctive printing technique.

Roy DeCarava and Langston Hughes, The Sweet Flypaper of Life, 1955

DeCarava’s photography of the late 1940s and early 1950s garnered the attention of Edward Steichen, who was then director of The Museum of Modern Art’s Department of Photography. At Steichen’s urging, DeCarava applied for and won a prestigious Guggenheim fellowship in 1952, becoming the first African American photographer to receive this honor. The fellowship enabled him to spend a year working solely on his photography, creating a comprehensive early artistic statement that he believed had been missing from the lexicon. These explorations such as the present work—now part of MoMA’s permanent collection—enriched and propelled the artistic innovation of his subsequent works.⁣

Roy DeCarava, 1950s (detail). Photo by Charles White

“Sometimes his subjects seem simply to rise above … hardships, like the young woman in Graduation, one of his best known images; wearing a white gown, she seems to float majestically along a sidewalk flanked by an empty lot and a pile of trash.”

—Roberta Smith, The New York Times

Roy DeCarava, 117th Street, New York, 1951 (detail)

An early work that the artist considered one of his most important images, smaller versions of Graduation feature in institutional collections including the Brooklyn Museum; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, where it is currently on view.

Installation view, Roy DeCarava: A Retrospective, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1996

“The intense density of Graduation gives way … to open, crystalline space modulated by a range of tonal values across which the viewer’s eyes are free to wander and explore.”

—Zoé Whitley, Roy DeCarava: Light Break

“This exploration of the possibilities of dark gray would be interesting in any photographer, but DeCarava did it time and again specifically as a photographer of black skin.… What is dark is neither blank nor empty. It is in fact full of wise light which, with patient seeing, can open out into glories.”

—Teju Cole, The New York Times

Installation view, Roy DeCarava: Selected Works, David Zwirner, London, 2022

Published on the occasion of the artist’s solo exhibition at the gallery in New York in 2019, Light Break features a preface by Zoé Whitley and an introduction and text by Sherry Turner DeCarava, and presents the first survey of his work since 1996.

Roy DeCarava: Light Break, 2019

“The artist creates the material that we look back upon as part of history.”

—Roy DeCarava

Roy DeCarava: Selected Works

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