The In Crowd

I just saw this guy featured on NY1 for Black History Month. Here's a video featuring some of his work. Exceprts from the bio on the YouTube page follow:

Roy DeCarava (1919) is a Master American photographer.

DeCarava was raised by his single mother, and to earn money he began working at an early age. He continued to hold odd jobs throughout most of his career as a photographer.

In 1955 the DeCarava's opened A Photographer's Gallery, an important New York City gallery then run by Anne DeCarava, pioneering an effort to win recognition for photography as a fine art; the gallery remained open for more than two years.

DeCarava, however, has never considered himself of this tradition. Rather his work harkens to the intense visual imagery and tones that influenced him as an early painter and graphic artist.

In 2006, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

He also co-wrote a book with Langston Hughes called the The Sweet Flypaper of Life.

Currently showing down at the World Financial Center in New York City:

"Visual Griots of Mali combines the importance of storytelling with the power of the camera, engaging Malian youth (ages 10-16) to use images instead of words in a revealing process of self-exploration and expression. Forty-nine black and white photographs, resulting from a series of workshops organized by the Academy for Educational Development, tell stories of life in Mali from the perspective of a new generation of visual griots.

Visual Griots of Mali is co-presented by the Museum for African Art and organized by the Academy for Educational Development (AED). This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

For more information about Visual Griots of Mali, click here." 

Described in Stuff magazine as the "Rolls-Royce of the photographic world," the Alpa 12 SWA camera is not only a beautiful example of industrial product design, it incredibly is able to shoot both digitally and using film which is a very handy feature for traditionalists when so many established camera manufacturers like Nikon and Minolta are exiting the film camera business. Read on:

"Connoisseurs and experts have always recognized the crucial importance of mechanical precision and optical quality in camera design and manufacturing. Just how important these qualities are, has recently been underlined: the ALPA 12 offers the immensely valuable possibility of making the change from classic film to digital, or vice versa, within seconds. It is the use of digital backs that is making the precision and optical quality aspect clearer than it has ever been. Digital chip sensors are absolutely even so that problems with film flatness do not occur - but instead, even the tiniest deviation from the optimal position of the chip will show up mercilessly. The concept of ALPA 12 is confirmed most impressively here: uncompromising precision and absolute top lenses guarantee best results. Analog and digital. That, on top of everything else, the ALPA 12 looks beautiful and has received many design prizes, is proof of the old saying that telling beauty comes from within." (click here to read more)

More clicks:

Alpa.ch 

Fader magazine is sometimes too wilfully cool for school for my tastes with their features on sub-sub-cultures of music (and sometimes art) from obscure parts of the planet, but their Photography Issue normally features some beautiful imagery. Here's editor Knox Robinson's commentary on why jazz legend Miles Davis graces the cover of this year's edition (which also happens to be their 30th issue):

"You already know what it is: Miles Davis. The FADER is first and foremost a magazine about emerging music, but lately we haven't been able to escape the mystical, mercurial spectre of the man: his name's been coming up in our interviews as an influence on musicians—emerging musicians—across a range of genres. At the same time, though, there's a kind of pernicious silence around the music of the man himself... a kind of fundamental lack of digging on the dude—as if wilding out and/or getting twisted and/or making crazy love to his musical vision wasn't a fundamental experience we all need to have. Because ours is a magazine that prefers to suggest rather than merely dictate, we reached out to musicians we respect and asked them to share an experience with a Miles Davis song or album. If the responses came in as a multivalent conversation about the life and legend of the man then perhaps that might be one angle on Miles's legacy—a legacy that's very much alive." (Click here to read more on the Fader Photography Issue)