Poetic Obituaries: Soon after [Roy] DeCarava started taking

photographs in the late 1940s, he found a powerful mentor in Edward Steichen, director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, who encouraged DeCarava to apply for a Guggenheim fellowship.

DeCarava was the first black photographer to receive the grant, in 1952. He used the $3,200 to support himself during his first year of photographing in Harlem.

The images he took that year became a book, "The Sweet Flypaper of Life" (1955), with text by Langston Hughes, the foremost black poet of his time.

from Los Angeles Times: Roy DeCarava dies at 89; art photographer depicted the African American experience

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