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December 8, 2022

Almanac of Story Tellers: Roy DeCarava

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to story telling -- in prose and in poetry, in art and in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books 

Today is the story of Dec. 9th
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    It is the 343rd day of the year, leaving 22 days remaining in 2022.
        On this date in 1919, the American photographer Roy DeCarava was born.

    He told his stories in black-and-white photography, turning pictures of African-Americans and jazz musicians in his Harlem neighborhood into fine art. He stressed that his images aimed for a creative expression and penetrating insight into his subjects that he said only another African-American could produce.

    He was an artist, a professor, and a man who promoted the idea that photography was an art that should be shown and admired. He published five books of art photography and had more than 15 solo exhibitions of his work around the United States.

    He was a professor at Hunter College in New York.

    DeCarava's portraits of jazz musicians in concert -- including such greats as Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, and Billie Holliday -- were exhibited at Harlem's Studio Museum in 1983. Later, many were published in The Sound I Saw: Improvisations on a Jazz Theme, in 2001.

    In 1952, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the resulting book of photographs was published as The Sweet Flypaper of Life in 1955. In 1994, he exhibited The Nation's Capitol in Photographs at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington.

    He was awarded the National Medals of Arts in 2006.

    DeCarava died in 2009.

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