The Photographer Who Painted an Era

I’d never seen such a large exhibition of Roy’s work until I joined David Zwirner. We did a show of his archive, as an artist, in both New York and London, when Hilton Als had also worked on a presentation of the material. Before that, honestly, I’d only ever seen one or two images in person at a time—in a group exhibition, or some kind of museum presentation. I’d been most familiar with the work through reproductions, through his books and catalogs. I never felt I had a deep knowledge of DeCarava’s practice beyond what I’d read. I’d never been to the estate or the studio until I was asked, very excitedly, to think about doing this show.

I get very emotional about this work. I did not expect to be hit by the wall I was hit by when I went to view more of it in person, in the estate’s archive. The first thing was seeing the prints unglazed and unframed—a game changer. I was floored. It sounds hyperbolic, and I’m not trying to exaggerate. But, I hope that when people see the prints in person, they’ll understand what inspired the exhibition design and the presentation. They are like rich oil paintings. There was a depth to the blacks, a richness, that you could feel once you took away the glass and everything else standing between you and the photograph. Removing that barrier sent me spiraling. They felt like I was in the room. They felt historic in a way that almost felt shocking—shocking that it hadn’t been written about more.

Pick a name, honestly. There’s a photograph of W.E.B. Du Bois in somebody’s apartment. There are rent parties, kids, the sounds of the street, a guy playing trumpet, people dancing. There’s love, there are families. All of it felt akin to this time for Roy in Harlem—largely, not exclusively. It hit me hard. I wanted to be a photographer in an earlier life; I studied photography, developed my own film in the darkroom. But I’d never seen anything like this in terms of how the film had been developed.

Formally, I was smitten. Conceptually, I feel like I just got it: no flash, which meant holding that shutter open for a very long time. In some of the photographs you’d think you’re looking at a shadow, but it’s actually a shape—the light was hitting the drummer, and everything else around him was so dark, because there was no flash on the camera. Thinking about that time lapse, about Roy—I don’t fully know how to put it into words—I was completely inspired.

I don’t know whether the icon comes first, or whether it’s the photographer who makes the icon by choosing to shoot it—but the longer you look at these images, that question becomes less important. I don’t think Roy was taking these photographs assuming there’d be greatness in them, or already seeing greatness. I have to give the caveat that I can’t know that from inside his lens, but that’s how I feel about them. He was photographing a narrative that was building around him, which included jazz musicians, but wasn’t only that. This started as a kind of artist’s maquette for him—not a commission, just images he collected for himself, as a conceptual project of his own. 

And the title, The Sound I Saw, it’s such a good title. I’ve become more intrigued by the non-jazz imagery for that very reason. He took it all simultaneously—bodies pressed against each other at a party aren’t necessarily a “jazz image.” They could be listening to jazz, they could be listening to reggae, I don’t know. The sound was there, prominent, but I think more than jazz influenced this work. He just happened to be around some great musicians, and his friends were cool, and Billie Holiday was walking out of the club. I think it’s really about him being among his peers.

He came to photography from painting; I think that plays into how he composed an image. He came at it from a different part of his brain than a typical photographer might have. I love the formal qualities of his printing. They’re all lifetime prints, which means—like a painting—we can’t just print a new one. He made each print by hand, and they feel like paintings. All the traditional silver gelatin craft is there—studying the light, the exposure—but he used it in a way I’d never seen before, embracing the light as part of the composition itself. If someone’s playing the standup bass, he’d keep it exposed long enough that you’re seeing the sound.

I didn’t fully understand the expansiveness of that until I sat with it: the negative; the print; his time; his hand. He made each one, and there will never be any more. It really is the tedious, exacting work of a craftsman—the layers, the time, the care that goes into a print, the way a painter spends real time on a painting—not just something run off a printer.

The first and only time Roy ever called himself a curator was for the first presentation of The Sound I Saw, at the Studio Museum in 1983. He worked with the museum, but he made the selection—125 images. Our re-presentation won’t be exact, and there may be a few more, since the suite is larger than that. But I like using his own curation as inspiration for how he intended it to be seen. It won’t be the same layout, but it’s the same idea: the prints make the story.

He reminds me of my favorite artists—true to his own practice. His work is about his practice. He was considering the world around him, but that consideration was part of the practice, not separate from it. His work was already big enough on its own.

I’ve been talking about this as my desire to have people slow down—to experience the work in a way that almost forces a slowdown. We live with photography that’s quick and disposable: you swipe through it, you take it, you move on. There’s another way to encounter a photograph, and it’s one I was pleasantly reminded of standing in front of this work—you should look at these like paintings. —Ebony L. Haynes