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Man Coming Up Subway Stairs

Roy DeCarava American
1952
Not on view
DeCarava, who began his career as a painter and printmaker, took up photography in the late 1940s. He is perhaps best known for his street photographs of Harlem and his portraits of jazz musicians, which have been justly celebrated as intimate, lyrical, and unsentimental expressions of the African American experience. In this picture, a man clenches his jaw and pulls himself up the stairs from the subway below, momentarily caught between palpable darkness and visible light.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Man Coming Up Subway Stairs
  • Artist: Roy DeCarava (American, 1919–2009)
  • Date: 1952
  • Medium: Gelatin silver print
  • Classification: Photographs
  • Credit Line: Gift of Photography in the Fine Arts, 1959
  • Object Number: 59.559.19
  • Curatorial Department: Photographs

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