Gio's Photography 

After getting off the packed and stuffy train of the LIRR, I walked outside and took a look around. Rain and people everywhere. I was on 31st and 7th. Penn Station. I used my phone to map the David Zwirner Gallery on West 19th and 10th ave in Chelsea. I saw people waiting on the taxi line and was too impatient to wait, so I started to walk. As someone who is from the Island, I never really take a true opportunity to walk around the city. Usually, I have a destination and that destination is touristy. Time Square, MSG, Broadway, Central Park, Little Italy, The Freedom Tower… all places I have been too, but never Chelsea. After 20 minutes, I have arrived to West 19th, I noticed that it was an art gallery block. Art Galleries everywhere I looked. As I continued to walk I saw a garage and warehouse with painting and sculptures being arranged. A woman holding on to her clipboard making sure the handlers are doing their job. Sculptures hanging from the ceiling set up in an obscure fashion.

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When I walked in, I was greeted at a front desk with the option to sign in, as well as a paragraph of information about Roy DeCarava. I asked questions about the photographer before I looked at his photos so I could understand why or where he took them. Roy DeCarava was born in 1919 in Harlem, New York. He originally went to school for painting but dropped out after one year. In 1947, he started photography with his reasoning for taking sketch photos. After taking many photos in Manhattan, he applied for a gallery at the Guggenheim becoming the first African-American to do so.

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DeCarava then had a gallery on the Lower East Side but alot of people did not go because his images were always dark and blurry. I did notice alot of images with blurriness to it, but they made the image interesting. They always weren’t blurry in the sense of a bad photo, but added a haze or style to it. One image that stuck out was the shadow of a building on a sidewalk. Two kids were on the sidewalk with one in the shadow and one out of it. I thought it was very interesting.

 

DeCarava lived out his days as a photography professor at Hunter College for almost three decades. He still continued to take photos as I saw in his gallery photos from 2005. DeCarava passed away in 2009 just shy of his 90th birthday. In honor of his 100th birthday, his family displayed over 130 of his photography for free.