The Sweet Flypaper of Life - Softcover

Roy DeCarava; Langston Hughes

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0999843818 ISBN 13: 9780999843819

Publisher: First Print Press, 2018

Synopsis

The Sweet Flypaper of Life is a “poem” about ordinary people, about teenagers around a jukebox, about children at an open fire hydrant, about riding the subway alone at night, about picket lines and artist work spaces. This renowned, life-affirming collaboration between artist Roy DeCarava and writer Langston Hughes honors in words and pictures what the authors saw, knew, and felt deeply about life in their city.

Hughes’s heart-warming description of Harlem in the late 1940s and early 1950s is seen through the eyes of one grandmother, Sister Mary Bradley. We experience the sights and sounds of Harlem as seen through her learned and worldly eyes, expressed here through Hughes’s poetic prose. As she states, “I done got my feet caught in the sweet flypaper of life and I’ll be dogged if I want to get loose.” DeCarava’s photographs lay open a world of sense and feeling that begins with his perception and vision. The ruminations go beyond the limit of simple observation and contend with deeper meanings to reveal these individuals as subjects worthy of art. While Hughes states “We’ve had so many books about how bad life is, maybe it’s time to have one showing how good it is,” the photographs bring us back to this lively dialogue and a complex reality, to a resolution that stands with the optimism of the photographic medium and the certainty of DeCarava’s artistic moment.

In 1952 DeCarava became the first African American photographer to win a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. The grant enabled DeCarava to focus on the photography he had been creating since the mid-1940s and to complete The Sweet Flypaper of Life , a moving, photo-poetic work in the urban setting of Harlem. DeCarava compiled a set of images from which Hughes chose 141 and adeptly supplied a fictive narration, reflecting on life in that city-within-a-city. First published in 1955, the book, widely considered a classic of photographic visual literature, was reprinted by public demand several times. This fourth printing, the Heritage Edition, is the first authorized English-language edition since 1983 and includes an afterword by Sherry Turner DeCarava tracing the history and ongoing importance of this book.

About this title

Review:

Astonishing verisimilitude.--New York Times

The sensitivity of the photographs and the excellent blending of the pictures with the text... Bravo!--Henri Cartier Bresson

A mixture of the warm and stark, the tender and the slightly terrifying- in short, very like life itself.--The Village Voice

The subtle, the almost exquisite interplay of text and photographs.--Image Journal

A harmony more than poetry or photography alone, but its own kind of art... a delicate and lovely fiction-document of life in Harlem.--Lewis Gannett

It is a book, then, that continues to fascinate, even more so, perhaps, in the current political climate. Its timely reissue will hopefully alert a new generation to a still undervalued master of intimate observation and his singular collaboration with a writer who instinctively understood his radical vision.--Sean O"Hagan "The Guardian "

"The Sweet Flypaper of Life" is an incredible wonder that is so compact you can almost cradle it in your palm. A sense of humanity permeates the black-and-white photographs...And DeCarava's narrow range of deep tones breathes beautiful life into the black faces of the young and old.--Nicole Herrington "New York Times "

"The Sweet Flypaper of Life" is an in-credible wonder that is so compact you can almost cradle it in your palm. A sense of hu-manity permeates the black-and-white photographs.--Nicole Herrington "New York Times "

A breakthrough in photo books.--Suzanne Charlé "nycwoman "

The Sweet Flypaper of Life remains a lauded title that conveys Harlem as a microcosm within the larger city.--Dani Issler "Brooklyn Rail "

About the Author:

Over the course of six decades, American artist Roy DeCarava (1919-2009) produced a singular collection of black-and-white photographs of modern life that combine formal acuity with an intimate and deeply human treatment of his subject matter. Grounded by a unified theory of the visual plane, his work displays a subtle mastery of tonal and spatial elements and devotion to the medium of photography as a means of artistic expression. DeCarava created images that carry an emotional impact in their immediate relationship to the viewer, while also revealing less-than-visible terrains. DeCarava's pioneering work privileged the aesthetic qualities of the medium, carrying the ability to reach the viewer as a counterpoint to the view of photography as mere chronicle or document and helping it to gain acceptance as an art form in its own right.

About this edition

• Publisher: First Print Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0999843818
• ISBN 13: 9780999843819
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 108