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Roy DeCarava

Untitled, 1956

Description

Maker

  • Roy DeCarava, 1919-2009, American

Title

Untitled

Year

1956

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Materials/Techniques

Materials

  • silver print,
  • silver gelatin print

Dimensions

Image: 33 x 22.5 cm (13 x 8 7/8 inches)

Type

  • Works on Paper,
  • Photographs

Credit

Walter H. Kimball Fund

Object Number

1990.020

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Roy DeCarava

January 11 - March 31, 2002

"The photograph was taken at a dance of a social club at the 11th St. Manor at Fifth Avenue... It's about these two dancers who represent a terrible torment for me in that I feel a great ambiguity about the image because of them. It's because they are in some ways distorted characters. What they actually are is two black male dancers who dance in the manner of an older generation of black vaudeville performers. The problem comes because their figures remind me so much of the real life experience of blacks in their need to put themselves in an awkward position before the man, for the man; to demean themselves in order to survive, to get along. In a way, these figures seem to epitomize that reality. And yet there is something in the figures not about that; something in the figures that is very creative, that is very real and very black in the finest sense of the word. So there is this duality, this ambiguity in the photograph that I find very hard to live with.... I have to say that even though it jars some of my sensibilities and it reminds me of things I would rather not be reminded of, it is still a good picture. In fact, it is good just because of those things and in spite of those things. The picture works." (Roy DeCarava, 1981)

One Voice, Many Visions

February 20 - June 14, 1998

African-American Art from the Permanent Collection

November 18, 1994 - February 19, 1995

Recent Acquisitions in the Siskind Center

September 10, 1993 - January 9, 1994

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 Untitled with the accession number of 1990.020. 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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