Hallway, NYC

Born in New York City’s Harlem, Roy DeCarava first purchased a camera to document his work in printmaking. By 1949, however, photography had replaced printmaking, painting, and drawing as his preferred artistic medium. After 1950, DeCarava began experimenting with a darker tonal range, as seen here. In his photographs, true blacks and true whites are rare; rather, his work is characterized by a range of dark grays.

Throughout his career, DeCarava produced bodies of work that explored people’s daily lives, specifically those of African Americans living in New York. Although his works have a humanist outlook, his artistic interpretation of Harlem set him apart from the many social documentary photographs of the neighborhood taken by others. He refused to be a part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 1969 exhibition Harlem on My Mind on the grounds that it misconceived African American artists and marginalized photography as an art form.