"Roy-Decarava" (December 9,1919-October 27,2009)

He was raised by his mama and graduated with a major in art from the Straubenmuller Textile High School in 1938.While still in high school he worked as a sign painter and display artist and in the poster division of the Works Projects Administration (WPA) in New York City.In his senior year he won a competition to design a medal for the National Tuberculosis Association's high school essay contest and upon graduation received ac scholarship for excellence in art.Supporting himself as a commercial artist,Roy studied painting at Cooper Union with Byron Thomas & Morris Kanton from 1938-1940,and lithography and drawing at the Harlem Art Center from 1940-1942.He attended rge George Washington Carver Art School in 1944 and 1945,studying painting with Charles White.In 1946 his serigraph won the print award at the Atlanta University Fifth Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture (a national juried exhibition for black artists),and the following year he had a one-man show at the Serigraph Gallery in New York.In 1946 Roy began to use photography as a way to sketch ideas for paintings,and by 1947 he had decided to concentrate exclusively on it.He lacked formal training,he approached photography as "just another medium than an artist would use";he quickly established a distinctive style and chose a subject-the people of Harlem-that engaged him deeply and productively.Some of his strongest work dates  from the late 1940s,and early 1950s,including Graduation (1949) and Gittel (1950)His first photographic exhibition was in 1950 at New York's Fort-Fourth Street Gallery,and that year he sold three prints to the Museum of Modern Art.In 1952 Roy became the tenth photographer and among the earliest artist to be awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.Continuing his work in Harlem during the fellowship year,he produced over 2,000 images;Roy wanted to show,he said,"[African Americans'] beauty and the image that we presented in our being." In 1955 four of his photographs appeared in the Museum of Modern Art's famous Family of Man exhibition and best-selling book.In the same year,141 photographs were published with a text by Langston Hughes in their much-acclaimed classic The Sweet Flypaper of Life (1955),a tale of everyday events in the lives of a fictional yet representative Harlem family.Roy formed his style at a time in photographic history when the social documentary ethos of the 1930s was given way to more formalist aesthetic,which especially appreciated a photographer's manipulation of the unique qualities of the medium.He was influenced by the French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson,whose theory with factual content of the "decisive moment" credits formal organization equally with factual content in conveying essential meaning in a photograph.Like Cartier Roy, uses a small camera,avoids, contrived settings, often shooting in the street, and achieves important,often metaphorical,effects through compodition,as in Sun and Shade (1952) and Boy Playing,Man Walking (1966).In deed,Roy has taken pains throughut his career to foster inter.