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Roy DeCarava

Shirley Looking Down Stairwell, 1952

Description

Maker

  • Roy DeCarava, 1919-2009, American

Title

Shirley Looking Down Stairwell

Year

1952

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Materials/Techniques

Materials

  • silver print,
  • silver gelatin print

Supports

  • photgraphic paper

Dimensions

Sheet: 35.4 x 28 cm (13 15/16 x 11 inches)

Signature / Inscription / Marks

LR corner, in ink, "Decarava".LR corner, in a different ink, smudged,"47".Verso, in bottom center, in graphite, "224 - #12 - 2"

Type

  • Works on Paper,
  • Photographs

Credit

Georgianna Sayles Aldrich Fund

Object Number

2002.4

About

This photograph conveys the anxiety of a waiting woman. Made the year Roy DeCarava won a prestigious fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, it is part of a larger project in which DeCarava intimately captured daily life in Harlem. His deeply compassionate images of his community so impressed Langston Hughes that the poet wrote a text to accompany them for what became a hugely successful book, The Sweet Flypaper of Life.

LR corner, in ink, "Decarava".LR corner, in a different ink, smudged,"47".Verso, in bottom center, in graphite, "224 - #12 - 2"

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Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in Copyright. This object is Shirley Looking Down Stairwell with the accession number of 2002.4. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.

Feedback

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.

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