Roy deCarava, born in Harlem in 1919, captured the rich history, culture, and political life of that neighborhood. He is perhaps best known for his portraits of legendary jazz musicians, including Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, and Billie Holiday.
He studied art at Cooper Union and then Harlem Community Arts Center, with Romare Bearden, Langston Hughes, and Jacob Lawrence. He began his career as a painter, but by the 1940s had turned to photography. Edward Steichen attended his first solo exhibition in 1950 and acquired deCarava's work for the Museum of Modern Art. Two years later, deCarava became the first African American photographer to win a Guggenheim Fellowship. That same decade, he founded A Photographer’s Gallery (1955–57) and published his first book, The Sweet Flypaper of Life (1955), which included text by Langston Hughes.
DeCarava was committed to teaching photography, and he was on the faculty at Cooper Union and Hunter College. He was the subject of a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1996.