Dancers, New York, 1956

Artist Roy DeCarava American, 1919-2009

Date1956 (printed c. 1986)

DimensionsOverall: 14 x 9 13/16 in. (35.6 x 25 cm);
Image: 13 x 8 7/8 in. (33.1 x 22.6 cm)

MediumGelatin-silver print

ClassificationPhotographs

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1988.57

Not on View

Published ReferencesRoy DeCarava: Photographs, Carmel, CA, The Friends of Photography, 1981, p.13, pl. 32.

Wigh, Leif, Arstider Fotografier av Roy DeCarava, Stockholm, Fotografiska Museet i Moderna Museet Skeppsholmen, 1988m cat. no. 48.

Adams, Henry et al, Made in America: Ten Centuries of American Art, New York, Hudson Hills, 1995, repr. p. 169.

Exhibition HistoryChicago, Edwynn Houk Gallery, Roy DeCarava Photographs, 1987.

Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Saint Louis Art Museum; Toledo Museum of Art; Kansas City, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; Pittsburgh, Carnegie Museum of Art, Made in America: Ten Centuries of American Art, 1995-1996.

Toledo Museum of Art, Past and Present: Photographs from the Permanent Collection, Jan. 22 - June 8, 1999.

Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan Museum of Art, New York Observed, 2002.

Toledo Museum of Art, Refraction/Reflection, April 20-September 2, 2012.

Toledo Museum of Art, People Get Ready: 50 Years of Civil Rights, Jun. 27-Sept. 21, 2014.

Toledo Museum of Art, In Motion: Dance and Performance in Art, September 18, 2015- January 3, 2016.

Label TextRoy DeCarava grew up in Harlem and began his artistic career studying to be a painter. He ended up concentrating on photography as he realized that, “A black painter, to be an artist, had to join the white world or not function—had to accept the values of white culture.” By 1950, three of DeCarava’s photographs were purchased by Edward Steichen (see his photo of Isadora Duncan in this exhibition) for the Museum of Modern Art in New York. With the support of Steichen, DeCarava became the first African American to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1952. The Fellowship allowed him to devote himself to the study of African American culture in New York. The images he produced of Harlem displayed a lyrical quality unlike anything seen before. DeCarava used available light whenever possible. His images are full of shadows and reflections and have been described as “bafflingly dark,” as in this image of two dancers performing in a nightclub.