Roy DeCarava, a photographer whose black and white images captured Harlem’s everyday life and the jazz greats who performed there, has died. He was 89.
DeCarava died in Manhattan of natural causes on Tuesday, said his daughter, Susan DeCarava. He had been teaching an advance photography course at Hunter College, where he joined the faculty in 1975.
Born in Harlem, DeCarava was considered to be among the first to give serious photographic attention to the black experience in America.
Trained as a painter, DeCarava relied on ambient light, infusing his images with shadows and shades of gray and black – a style that invited the viewer to look closer.
“He photographed for himself, and ultimately produced a body of work that enshrined the social contradictions of the ’50s, the explosion of improvisational jazz music in the ’60s, the struggle for social equity, the bold faced stridency of the ’70s and ’80s, only to turn to ev en more contemplative realities during the later years of his life,” his wife, art historian Sherry Turner DeCarava, said in a statement.
“His contribution to American photography and culture is manifold,” she added.
Using a 35 mm camera, he chronicled black Americans doing ordinary things: A family watching the Harlem River; a couple dancing in their kitchen; a girl standing on a desolate street in a white graduation dress.
DeCarava worked at a time of enormous creative energy in Harlem, whose many residents included prominent writers, artists and musicians. He spent years capturing candid shots of Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane and other jazz musicians – many taken in smoke-filled nightclubs.
“The Sound I Saw,” published in 2001 and reprinted in 2003, is a collection of his jazz photography.
In 1951, he became the first black photographer to win the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in the arts.
In his scholarship application, he wrote: “I want to show the strength, the wisdom, the dignity of the Negro people. Not the famous and the well known, but the unknown and the unnamed, thus revealing the roots from which spring the greatness of all human beings. … I do not want a documentary or sociological statement, I want a creative expression, the kind of penetrating insight and understanding of Negroes which I believe only a Negro photographer can interpret.”
In 1955, he collaborated with poet Langston Hughes on the best-selling pictorial narrative on 20th century African-American life titled “The Sweet Flypaper of Life.”
Some of his works were featured in the 1950 New York exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, “The Family of Man,” that was curated by renowned photographer Edward Steichen.
Jennifer J. Raab, president of Hunter College, called DeCarava a beloved colleague and teacher who “will long be remembered for his inspiring contributions to the arts and for enriching the lives of gene rations of students.”
MoMA mounted a retrospective of DeCarava’s work in 1996.
His works are in the collections of major museums, including the National Gallery of Art and the National Portrait Gallery, in Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York; and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.
Beside his wife and daughter Susan, he is also survived by daughters Wendy and Laura DeCarava.
Apple and Google Face UK Investigation Into Mobile Browser Dominance
Apple and Google aren't giving consumers a genuine choice of mobile web browsers, a British watchdog said Friday in a report that recommends they face an investigation under new U.K. digital rules taking effect next year.
The Competition and Markets Authority took aim at Apple, saying the iPhone maker's tactics hold back innovation by stopping rivals from giving users new features like faster webpage loading. Apple does this by restricting progressive web apps, which don't need to be downloaded from an app store and aren't subject to app store commissions, the report said.
"This technology is not able to fully take off on iOS devices," the watchdog said in a provisional report on its investigation into mobile browsers that it opened after an initial study concluded that Apple and Google effectively have a chokehold on "mobile ecosystems."
The CMA's report also found that Apple and Google manipulate the choices given to mobile phone users to make their own browsers "the clearest or easiest option."
And it said that the a revenue-sharing deal between the two U.S. Big Tech companies "significantly reduces their financial incentives" to compete in mobile browsers on Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones.
Both companies said they will "engage constructively" with the CMA.
Apple said it disagreed with the findings and said it was concerned that the recommendations would undermine user privacy and security.
Google said the openness of its Android mobile operating system "has helped to expand choice, reduce prices and democratize access to smartphones and apps" and that it's "committed to open platforms that empower consumers."
It's the latest move by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to crack down on the... Read More