Roy DeCarava: Light Break
Publisher: First Print Press/David Zwirner Books
Publication Date: 2019
Preface by Zoé Whitley. Introduction and text by Sherry Turner DeCarava
Light Break presents the first survey since 1996 of photographer Roy DeCarava, an essential figure of American art and culture, whose “poetry of vision” re-forms urban life, labor, love, and jazz into the discovery of “an intimate, emotional arc of transformation.”
Though DeCarava often refrained from public discussion of his work, this catalogue provides important background into determining factors of his aesthetic sensibility—his traditional training in painting and printmaking as well as his philosophical undertakings. It brings the viewer to a consideration of contradictory precepts in DeCarava’s work that seeks resolution through tonal and structural elements within the image.
Light Break presents a wide-ranging selection of DeCarava’s photographs accompanied by a preface by Zoé Whitley, an American curator based in London, and features an introduction and essay by curator and art historian Sherry Turner DeCarava. Titled “Celebration,” Turner DeCarava’s essay considers the artist’s singular poetic vision, his timeless portrayals of individuals and places, and his mastery of composition and photographic printmaking.
As Whitley writes, “In making photographs, as in life, DeCarava was patient. Possessing both a peerless self-awareness and acute observational skills, he knew intuitively when to wait and when to open the camera’s shutter. In the dark room, he availed himself of these same attributes, moving with steady assurance to develop his prints so as to allow the full range of what he called his ‘infinite scale of grey tones’—often realized at the deepest end of the spectrum—to emerge slowly and fully.”
Published on the occasion of an exhibition of DeCarava’s work at David Zwirner, New York in 2019, this exquisite volume showcases a dynamic range of images that underscore DeCarava’s subtle mastery of tonal and spatial elements across a wide, fascinating array of subject matter: from the figural implications of smoke and debris to the “shimmering mirror beneath a mother as she walks with her children in the morning light.” These photographs express a strength of imagery—an intent to synchronize and honor the pulse of art as an emergent signal for creative and revelatory freedom.
Details
Publisher: First Print Press/David Zwirner Books
Artist: Roy DeCarava
Contributors: Sherry Turner DeCarava, Zoé Whitley
Publication Date: 2019
ISBN: 9781644230251
Retail: $60 | £45 | €62
Status: Available
Designer: Katy Homans
Printer: Trifolio, Verona
Binding: Hardcover
Dimensions: 9 ¾ × 11 ½ in | 24.8 × 29.2 cm
Pages: 228
Reproductions: 100 tritone
Artist and Contributors
Roy DeCarava
Over the course of six decades, American artist Roy DeCarava (1919–2009) produced a singular collection of black-and-white photographs of modern life that combine formal acuity with an intimate and deeply human treatment of his subject matter. Grounded by a unified theory of the visual plane, his work displays a subtle mastery of tonal and spatial elements and devotion to the medium of photography as a means of artistic expression.
Sherry Turner DeCarava
Sherry Turner DeCarava is an art historian, curator, and independent scholar in the fields of traditional arts and contemporary American photography. She has taught or lectured extensively at universities and museums, including Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY), Brooklyn Museum, and Rockefeller University. Serving as the executive director, the principal focus of her professional career has been the development of The DeCarava Archives, which supports exhibition and scholarly research projects related to the work of her late husband Roy DeCarava. She is the author of two definitive texts on his photography, including that in Roy DeCarava: A Retrospective published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1996) and in Roy DeCarava: Photographs, a monograph published by the Friends of Photography/Ansel Adams Trust (1981). Awarded the Prix de la Photographie by Les Rencontres de la Photographie, the Arles Center for Culture, in its annual survey of international photography, her 1981 text was lauded as the best photo/text collaboration of the year. In 2014 she initiated First Print Press, beginning a process to republish classic Roy DeCarava books, while bringing new photographic projects into print.
Zoé Whitley
Zoé Whitley is senior curator at the Hayward Gallery in London, prior to which she was curator, International Art, at Tate Modern. In 2019, she curated the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and co-curated the acclaimed exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power. Author of The Graphic World of Paul Peter Piech (2014) and children’s book Meet the Artist: Frank Bowling (2019), she has also authored exhibition catalogues, essays, and interviews on Grace Wales-Bonner, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Lubaina Himid, Alexander McQueen, and Jack Whitten, among others. Zoé was named one of Apollo Magazine’s 40 Under 40 Thinkers in Europe, and one of ArtLyst’s 2017 100 Alternative Powerhouses in the not-for-profit contemporary art world.
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