De Carava, Roy

De Carava, Roy

(1919– ) artist, photographer; born in New York City. While working as a commercial artist (1944–56), he switched over to photography and was the first African-American awarded a Guggenheim in 1952. In 1955, he published The Sweet Flypaper of Life with pictures of blacks in Harlem. A successful freelance photographer working for advertising agencies and magazines (1959–75), he organized workshops for African-American photographers and was a professor at Hunter College (1979).