Source
Roy DeCarava, Photographer, Dies at 89
Citation
Cotter, Holland. “Roy DeCarava, Photographer, Dies at 89.” The New York Times, October 28, 2009. Obituary.
Relevance
Named-author obituary of record by Cotter (NYT senior art critic) for Roy DeCarava (1919–2009), whose print appears at plate #18 of The Family of Man (Lovers). Source for the biographical dates in pher-roy-decarava.
Key excerpts / pages
- Birth: December 9, 1919, Harlem, New York City.
- Death: October 27, 2009, New York City.
- Career summary notes his 1952 Guggenheim Fellowship (first awarded to an African-American photographer), his 1955 book The Sweet Flypaper of Life with Langston Hughes, and his 1996 MoMA retrospective.
Notes
- The MoMA Master Checklist prints the name as “Roy De Carava”; later sources (including DeCarava’s own estate) print it as “Roy DeCarava.” Our
data/photographs.csvpreserves the checklist spelling;data/photographers.csvrecords the canonical “Roy DeCarava” and notes the checklist variant. - Perspective: journalistic / biographical.
- Re-verification 2026-04-24 (issue #9): NYT archive URL not directly fetchable (403, paywall); Wayback not attempted for this specific URL in this round. MoMA’s online collection was attempted as corroboration but returned 403 — DeCarava’s 1952 Guggenheim Fellowship, 1955 Sweet Flypaper of Life with Langston Hughes, and 1996 MoMA retrospective were NOT re-verified against MoMA’s collection record in this round. Flagged
verified: falsepending Chrome-session verification.