1967, The Sweet Flypaper of Life by Roy DeCarava & Langston Hughes, SB 1st H&W

Description: Photographs by Roy DeCarava, text by Langston Hughes, and Afterword by Sherry Turner DeCarava. First published in 1955 in hardback by Simon & Schuster, this is the "First Hill and Wang Edition November 1967" (from the copyright page). It is in VERY GOOD CONDITION. There is light wear along the edges of the covers and where the covers meet the spine. There is also a bit of scratching on the front cover and some age-toning of white spaces of the back cover. There are no interior marks in 96 clean and solidly bound pages. A NICE COPY OF A SPECIAL BOOK. A summary from an online listing: “The people in these photographs had no walls up. They just accepted me and permitted me to take their photographs without any self-consciousness.” —Roy DeCarava The Sweet Flypaper of Life is a “poem” about ordinary people, about teenagers around a jukebox, about children at an open fire hydrant, about riding the subway alone at night, about picket lines and artist work spaces. This renowned, life-affirming collaboration between artist Roy DeCarava and writer Langston Hughes honors in words and pictures what the authors saw, knew, and felt deeply about life in their city. Hughes’s heart-warming description of Harlem in the late 1940s and early 1950s is seen through the eyes of one grandmother, Sister Mary Bradley. As she guides the reader through the lives of those around her, we imagine the babies born, families in struggle, children yet flourishing. We experience the sights and sounds of Harlem as seen through her learned and worldly eyes, expressed here through Hughes’s poetic prose. As she states, “I done got my feet caught in the sweet flypaper of life and I’ll be dogged if I want to get loose.” DeCarava’s photographs lay open a world of sense and feeling that begins with his perception and vision. The ruminations go beyond the limit of simple observation and contend with deeper meanings to reveal these individuals as subjects worthy of art. While Hughes states “We’ve had so many books about how bad life is, maybe it’s time to have one showing how good it is,” the photographs bring us back to this lively dialogue and a complex reality, to a resolution that stands with the optimism of the photographic medium and the certainty of DeCarava’s artistic moment." B147

Price: 75 USD

Location: Burtonsville, Maryland

End Time: 2024-03-04T19:17:34.000Z

Shipping Cost: 6 USD