DE CARAVA ROY (1919 ) Portfolio entitled Roy De Carava

Sale 2132 - Lot 551

Price Realized: $ 81,000

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 20,000 - $ 25,000

DE CARAVA, ROY (1919- )
Portfolio entitled "Roy De Carava." With 12 stunning dust-grain photogravures, image size 7 1/2x11 inches (19.1x28 cm.), sheet size 18x22 inches (45.7x55.9 cm.), each is signed, dated, and numbered, "39/50," by De Carava, in pencil, on recto. Folio, gilt-lettered blue cloth slipcase; contents loose as issued. 1991

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"Four Men, New York" (1956) "Paul Robeson, New York" (1950) "Lingerie, New York" (1950) "Horace Silver, New York" (1963) "Couple Dancing, New York" (1956) "Across the Street, Night, Brooklyn" (1978) "Night Feeding, Brooklyn" (1973) "Billie at Braddocks, New York" (1952) "Man in Window, Brooklyn" (1978) "Fourth of July, Prospect Park, Brooklyn" (1979) "Dancers, New York" (1956) "Milt Jackson, New York" (1956).

Roy DeCarava's long photographic career is inextricably linked with Harlem, which he rendered in rich dark tones. Initially a print-maker, he first acquired a hand-held camera in the 1940s and found an artistic vocabulary and sensibility that better suited his ambitions. DeCarava first exhibited his photographs in 1950 and, in 1952 became the first African-American to be awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. An intensely fruitful period followed, highlighted by the publication of "The Sweet Flypaper of Life," with poet Langston Hughes, in 1955.

His body of work is notable for its great range--encompassing both the lyrical images of jazz musicians and the gritty depiction of life in mid-century Harlem. An excerpt from DeCarava''s Guggenheim proposal stated: '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 want a creative expression, the kind of penetrating insight and understanding of Negroes which I believe only a Negro photographer can interpret.' This portfolio of DeCarava's photographs underscores his status as a masterful chronicler of the human condition.

Roy DeCarava''s long photographic career is inextricably linked with Harlem, which he rendered in rich dark tones. Initially a print-maker, he first acquired a hand-held camera in the 1940s and found an artistic vocabulary and sensibility that better suited his ambitions. DeCarava first exhibited his photographs in 1950 and, in 1952 became the first African-American to be awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. An intensely fruitful period followed, highlighted by the publication of "The Sweet Flypaper of Life," with poet Langston Hughes, in 1955.

His body of work is notable for its great range--encompassing both the lyrical images of jazz musicians and the gritty depiction of life in mid-century Harlem. An excerpt from DeCarava''s Guggenheim proposal stated: "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 want a creative expression, the kind of penetrating insight and understanding of Negroes which I believe only a Negro photographer can interpret." This portfolio of DeCarava''s photographs underscores his status as a masterful chronicler of the human condition.