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Older: Photo Free-Write: Homage to Roy Pt. 4
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 …
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 …
Homage to Roy Pt. 5
PHOTO BACKGROUND: Shani, a.k.a Cynthia Gillespie, Atlanta, GA, 1993.
COMMENTARY:
Another installment in my personal tribute the the great 20th century photographer, Roy DeCarava.
Excerpt from a previous post in this series (Homage to Roy Pt. 4):
“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….
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 him as a giant in my creative life.”
Roy DeCarava (December 9, 1919 – October 27, 2009)