a day ago via Facebook
See/Read what you're missing! Our first courtesy preview of The Exposure Archives has been released: an essay on the work of Roy DeCarava by Ruth Wallen that is as timely and relevant now as it was when it was originally published in the fall of 1990.
"At the center of the composition in "Boy Playing, Man Walking" is a black man with his face turned toward the viewer. Next to him is a spray-painted image of a skull or ape's head. In one sense it is as if the man is daring the white viewer: "So you think that I really look like that!" but the black outline of a head is spray painted on a white wall. Is it a white or black skull? In front and to the side of the man is a white child. His face is turned sideways and covered with the ubiquitous glasses. Is the boy young and innocent? The graffiti may have been painted by a boy not much older than this one. How young do belief systems start? Reading it from another angle, it posits that we are all alike, have skulls, and are descended from apes. Yet the black figure is manly, with the courage to face the viewer, where is the white figure is childish and will only look away."
https://medium.com/exposure-magazine/reading-the-shadows-the-photography-of-roy-decarava-f17b135cd5b9
