Roy DeCarava, one of my Friday Inspirations back in August passed away this week at the age of 89.
Roy DeCarava trained to be a painter, but while using a camera to gather images for his printmaking work, he began to gravitate toward photography, in part because of its immediacy but also because of the limitations he saw all around him for a black artist in a segregated nation. Over a career spanning almost 70 years, DeCarava came to be regarded as the founder of a school of African-American photography that broke with the social documentary traditions of his time. He turned his neighborhood of Harlem into his canvas and became one of the most important photographers of his generation by chronicling its people
The NY Times has a slideshow and more information.
