Roy DeCarava’s 1952 Guggenheim Fellowship application outlined his desire to show ‘not the famous and well known, but the unknown and the unnamed. . . to heighten the awareness of my people and bring to our consciousness a greater knowledge of our heritage’ (Retrospective, p. 19). He was the first Black American photographer to win a Guggenheim Fellowship, and sought to document his community in the wake of the Harlem Renaissance. By imbuing his photographs with his signature moody lighting and dramatic play of shadows, he succeeded in bringing forth striking images of everyday life in Harlem. During an epoch in which film emulsions were broadly calibrated to capture fair skin, DeCarava modulated the tonalities and exposures with a lyricism that evokes both beauty and mystery (for further information, see Teju Cole ‘A True Picture of Black Skin,’ The New York t.mes Magazine, 18 February 2015).

Throughout his career, DeCarava remained committed to representing the African American community and reinvigorating cultural organizations. Displeased with the way the American Society of Magazine Photographers dismissed his claims of racial prejudice within the industry, he played an instrumental role in forming the Kamoinge Workshop in 1963, a collects ive of African-American photographers. Under DeCarava’s early leadership, the group opened a gallery in Harlem on 125th Street as a venue to create and sell their collaborative portfolios. This platform for creative exchange ultimately gave a voice to DeCarava’s generation of black photographers.