Inye Wokoma . The Photoblog

PHOTO BACKGROUND: Jamillah, 1540 Olympian Cir, Atlanta, GA, 1998-1999.

COMMENTARY:
I have been thinking a lot about Roy Decarava lately. In the wake of his passing I have been spending a lot of time revisiting his work. The Sound I Saw is one of the most cherished books in my entire collection. It has been quite a revelation realizing just how influential he was in shaping my sensibilities as a photographer. Long before I was aware of him as a photographer, I was familiar with several of his works as individual photographs. I’d been collecting photographs on postcards, from magazines and other places for at least 8 years before I actually picked up a camera to pursue photography on my own. In that time I had managed to make several of his images a part of my informal collection. It wasn’t until the mid to late nineties, several years into my quest as a photographer, that I became familiar with him as a part of my study of early and mid 20th century photographers.

As I dug seriously into his body of work I immediately began to understand how he played a role in shaping my vision. Roy DeCarava’s eloquent narrative of African American life in New York is made all the more poetic by the way that he crafted his images. He is famous for the rich, complex nature of shadow in his photograph. As if each image was metaphor for an unrecognized complexity of African American life and humanity.

I was born into and weaned on mid 20th Century black and white photography. The photographers I admired has a strong sense of social commentary and clearly saw their work as an integral part of the vitality of the communities they lived in. When I took up photography I set out on that path. Working with black and white film allowed me to emulate the work of photographers I admired technically, aesthetically and socially.

By the year 2000 I had seven years of my own photographic work to reflect on; years during which I was incredibly productive, inquisitive, intuitive and uninhibited in what and how I shot. Two years later made ‘The Sound I Saw” a centerpiece in my library.

In the intervening years my photographic life evolved in new and exciting ways. I began to work more as an portrait and editorial photographer and photojournalist. Like just about everyone else, I took the digital plunge and enthusiastically pursued many of the possibilities offered by the medium. Gradually I shot less and less black and white, and ultimately less and less film. With these new professional, technical and creative forces my work changed, not entirely, but it did change. What is amazing now, as I reflect on DeCarava’s influence on my work is what has endured.

Two things I think will always be at the core of my creative vision as a photographer are a love of rich and complex shadows and an abiding desire to explore and express the complex realities of African American life. Even as digital has made it possible to explore so many visual possibilities, in my personal work I have been consumed with how to make my images look and feel like the black and white images that I fell in love with as a child.

Now as I revisit DeCarava’s work, my early work and what endures in my recent work I am moved to recognize as a giant in my creative life.

Roy DeCarava (December 9, 1919 – October 27, 2009)

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