WEBVTT

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Roy DeCarava is a photographer

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for thirty six years he has created images
that have earned him the title of a master.

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Did you, did you hear that?
Yeah (inaudible).

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Tell me what\'s name of it,
tell me what the name of it.

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It\'s a bird. Be gentle not
bird no bird Aah No high,

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no high, no high (inaudible). Ooh.

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Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh, ooh. Ooh, ooh.

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Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.

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[music]

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It starts before you snap the shutter

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it starts with your sense of what
is important? It starts with that.

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This is where the creation
comes in it\'s that meet

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the Human being to deal

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with his emotions and his
feelings and give them a voice.

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[music]

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When I first moved in this
block I saw that wall

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and I\'ve kept staring at it\'s just so
close to what my image of my mother is.

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She was left to bring up
a child all by herself

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and we were very poor. I was lucky in that

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I had a mother who was loving and she
want to make sure that I survive.

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On the 9th of December nineteen
nineteen Roy DeCarava was born

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in New York\'s, Harlem. In the nineteen
twenty\'s Harlem was optimistic

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this optimism was shattered
with the great depression.

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We had no money, there were no
gains I had to make my world

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and so I made it mine by drawing
it and it didn\'t cost me anything

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a piece of chalk pencil and a paper,

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that\'s all I need it.

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So that I became the muralist of
the block and then I would draw

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these gigantic cowboy figures from
one side of the curve to the other

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and that that was quite an achievement. The
first artist to really impress me was van Gogh,

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it was his emotional intensity

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and honesty that I felt and it was
there that I began to really think.

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Somewhere along the line I
developed a social sense.

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It was a lot of people that
were in the same boat.

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At the end of high school
and in spite of the fact

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that my grades were higher than everybody
else\'s I did not get the scholarship,

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the scholarship was of course
given to a white student.

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In nineteen thirty eight Roy was working full
time while studying art at Cooper Union.

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I was the only black student there
and there was nothing overed.

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You know no cross burning\'s
or anything like that.

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But it was just a very chilly atmosphere.
So I left Cooper Union

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to take courses at the Harlem Art
Center, it was completely different

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because it was warm, it was alive,

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it was just a marvelous school they went
out and encourage people in the community

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ordinary people to come to
classes and become involved.

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Roy strongest influence was
the artist Charles White.

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There was this dynamic overpowering figures

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that spoke of strength and dignity

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but they were symbolic rather than human.

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I wanted my work to be more human, I
was looking to express some things

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that I felt but why, why that I
draw this layer in this way?

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I wanted him to be alive. I
want you to look at that

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and see what I saw I was
looking for his humanity.

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Roy kept working days at
night he worked on his art.

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To save time with his sketching
Roy turned to photography.

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I bought a small inexpensive camera
and I started to take pictures.

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I couldn\'t afford enlarger. I built
an enlarger out of a coffee can

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a cup of condenses and a lens
and I really got into it.

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From the very beginning there was
this kind of a magic quality to it

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and also it was the immediacy of me

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and it was always changing was
exciting and, and alive and vibrant.

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[music]

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It\'s not a process

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which is strictly logical.
I mean I see a scene

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and I associate it with
something entirely unrelated

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and it makes a connection for me visually.

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Then I try to reach that point in the print

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where that thing is at its maximum

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no more, no less. I print emotionally,

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I print for what I want, what I feel.

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I don\'t want anything that comes
between you and the idea.

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So that whatever it is I try to push it

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or pull it to the point where it\'s supreme.

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The thing that to me that
that gives a photograph

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a special unique quality
is a fact of its reality

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but I\'m not talking about the reality of

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its ability to copy or to render something.

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There is a relationship between you
and the object in the photograph

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and it\'s only because you know
that this at one time existed

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or still exists. So that is
the reality photography.

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[music]

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[sil.]

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And? More?

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I need some of the abstract nature study. A
friend of mine said he was going to be on TV.

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So I was watching him and there come this
lady, very nice looking lady. I said Wow.

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What happened was I was working
for the Brooklyn Museum

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doing their gallery lectures. So of
course I call him up and I said,

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\"hey what\'s happening how
come you didn\'t let me know

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you knew that lady or you
didn\'t introduce me to her.\"

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And he but he didn\'t have to wait for an
introduction actually I introduced myself later,

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I was doing a program involved in
bringing artists into the museum

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to lecture and so I had
contacted him as a photographer

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and that was how we met.

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Roy married art historian
Sherry Turner In 1970,

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Soon after she began a critical
analysis of Roy\'s work.

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I had an opportunity to begin

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Willian archival project on Roy\'s work
about what the meaning and content was.

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Light is a transforming element

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and plays a very important
part in this images

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it\'s a light that has
strength who gentlemas

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[music]

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Roy\'s photographic career
began in nineteen fifty

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with his first one man show. Edward Steichen
America\'s dean of photography was very impressed.

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He bought Roy\'s prints
and included his work

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in the classic exhibition
The Family of Man.

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Years later Steichen would call Roy DeCarava
one of the world\'s ten best photographers.

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Well The Family of Man was the project that
Steichen was working on when he met me.

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He didn\'t show one of my stronger pictures

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the girl walking down the street
the girl in the graduation dress.

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I said, \"Why don\'t you want to use that?\" he said,
\"I can\'t use that.\" he said \"it\'s too strong.\"

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Well it was true and that this woman was coming
out of the sunlight and going into the dark

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and he felt that this was not in the
harmony with his bright, cheery,

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wonderful world of this family of man
working, singing and dancing together

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you see but I put it in the perspective

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that he still had his eye on what
he thought was good for humanity.

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[music]

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Edward Steichen also sponsored Roy for a Guggenheim
Fellowship. He became the first black photographer

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to receive the award. It finally
gave Roy the opportunity

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to work uninterrupted on his art.

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Black people in America were not
viewed as worthy subject matter.

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We were portrayed either in a superficial

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or a caricatured way or as a problem.

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My project on the Guggenheim was to
photograph the people of my community.

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I was concerned about our beauty

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and the image that we
presented in our being.

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[music]

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In the early 1950\'s Roy\'s portfolio
was rejected as too Negro.

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Frustrated he showed his work
to the writer Langston Hughes.

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First thing he asked me says
well, \"Why don\'t you do a book?\"

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well I said, \"I\'ve been to see a lot of
publishers nobody will do it.\" he says,

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\"Well we\'re going to do a book.\" He simply
picked out the pictures that he wanted

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and wrote about it the book was just a
tremendous artistic success in that,

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it got rave reviews from beginning.

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[music]

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I like full tour.

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It just a kind of a feeling that
I had and I like this richness,

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this lush almost physical vision

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that one gets when one sees a full
(inaudible) the gray sliding into each other

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and out of each other man
is just unbelievable.

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[music]

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Roy decided to freelance in nineteen fifty eight
for the next eighteen years he was a black pioneer

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in commercial photography working for clients
like Sports Illustrated and Harry Belafonte.

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When I was trying to find work

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trying to sell my photographs I
would take them to art directors

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and they were literally
shaken when they saw my work.

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They were not used to seen black
artists walk through the door

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with the portfolio of photographs.
Its like,

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\"This stuff does not belong here why did
you bring it to me? How dare you bring

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this kind of thing in my
office and show it to me?\"

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[sil.]

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Now you, you, you, you begin to wonder

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do you not sure whether it\'s
because a black person is doing it

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or because it\'s no good. Unless you have
a strong sense of yourself it can ruin.

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[sil.]

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The photo historical and photo critical
establishment is predominantly

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almost exclusively white and male obviously
and a part of that in those terms.

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But it\'s, it\'s got all the biases

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of whites can prejudice male prejudice

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and has not been aware of that bias.
Consequently for a photographer like

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Roy with very highly personalized vision of the
world and his role has been that of the outsider.

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[music]

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These photographs have documentary value

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but they were also the record of the
travels of one for a unique sensibility

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which is Roy\'s sensibility, through the
experience of late twentieth century America.

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[music]

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Yes I think approaches the
visual experience of photography

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that precise moment when the shutter

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captures that slice of experience that
you see, that you feel at that moment

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when all things come together.

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[music]

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In 1955, there were no real
photography galleries.

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So I proceeded to open a
Photographer\'s Gallery.

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Our team Eugene Meatyard, Win Bullock

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all exhibited my Gallery
at one time another.

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Yet today in spite of the fact that our
shows were covered by the New York Times

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there has been no mention of my gallery

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or its history in photographic
literature it\'s a black hole

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whereas black holes where,
where there\'s nothing.

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So that my experience with the photographic

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community has been rather bitter,

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I was literally starving to death in
the sky had the nerve to call me up

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and asked me to introduce him to a black family so he
could make a couple of thousand dollars Taking pictures.

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[sil.]

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He has helped me spiritually in the sense that
all the phase I\'ve come against in photography

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which I came maybe ten, fifteen
after Roy as a black photographer

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and I see that he has survived this

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and I say well hey if Roy has
a survived this I know I can.

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The formation of the Kamoinge
workshop was centered around

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economic policy in other way it\'s just getting
work for black photographer. We had absolutely

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no power to get jobs
what are we going to do?

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We wanted to photograph black people
in a dignified in a beautiful way

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and that\'s eventually what Kamoinge became.
A group that devoted itself

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to the needs of black people in an
image sets so we did become a force

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an aesthetic yet an intellectual
force in the black community.

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[music]

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He\'s been very important as a teacher
and the Kamoinge workshop was

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perhaps the formative educational experience
for generation of black photographers

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and I think through them for another couple of generations of black
photographers who\'ve been influenced by Roy even if they don\'t know him.

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I don\'t think (inaudible) sit
there like that naturally.

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He is a rather hawk preposition
Yeah he\'s not normal

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and so I guess and I feels very staged and…

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Research going. Yeah

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I keep digging you out and you
keep digging yourself in.

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I can make it with a lot of
hard work and persistence

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I think I\'ve shown those qualities
and Yeah, well. I\'m passed and but

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I got, I got to be honest with you
and tell you exactly how I think.

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I would just amend what
you said to say that

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maybe you can make it you cannot make the,

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the decision on the basis
of you\'re going to succeed.

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If you do such, such and such

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because life doesn\'t work that way especially when it comes
to creative things so you\'ve got to make the decision

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on the basis of almost a blind commitment

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and you\'re doing it because you like to do it and
you\'re going to do it as long as it\'s possible.

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[sil.]

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Thank you very much a beautiful photograph.
Roy and his picture is considering each image

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at the level of aesthetic
and human consideration

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and he\'s able to pick these things
up and have a tremendous human value

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unless I think (inaudible) people
primarily for that reason.

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[music]

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The studio museum in Harlem thought it was
very important to do a major exhibition

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of Roy DeCarava\'s works because Roy
is one of our greatest living artist.

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And one of the changes that
black people could do is art

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and the concept of the world

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which has been shaped by the blackness
makes indications of its existence in art.

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So yes there is a black aesthetic

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and I\'m would do all I can
to ensure that it survives

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because if the black
aesthetic doesn\'t survive

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then Blacks don\'t survive.

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The major definition has been that
I\'m a documentary photographer

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and then I became

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a people photographer and then
I became a street photographer

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and then I became a jazz photographer

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and oh yes, I must have forget

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I am a black photographer
and there\'s nothing wrong

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with any of those definitions the only
trouble is that I need all of them

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to define myself. I do want express it all,

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all of myself.