As reported in ARTNews Supreme have collaborated on a new clothing line with the estate of photographer Roy DeCarava. The collection features two T-shirts and a hoodie. The latter, available in five colours, features a rear print of Malcolm X that was taken in 1964. The T-shirts also in a variety of colours also include the Malcolm X photo, as well as another tee that depicts a signature work of DeCarava.
DeCarava, who is best known for his black-and-white images of Harlem taken during the 1950s, trained as a printmaker and painter before embarking on a career in photography. In 1952, he became the first Black photographer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship.
He later used the grant to produce the 1955 photobook The Sweet Flypaper of Life, which featured text by the poet Langston Hughes and which follows the fictional life of a Harlem grandmother. That same year, he opened the short-lived Photographer’s Gallery in New York and eventually went on to teach at Hunter College in 1975.
Supreme’s collaboration with the archive comes as DeCarava experiences a new level of mainstream attention. His images were included in the landmark 2017 traveling exhibition “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power,” which focused on the work of Black artists between 1963 and 1983.
This past January, David Zwirner, which began representing DeCarava’s estate four years ago, mounted a large-scale exhibition devoted to the late photographer, who died at the age of 89 in 2009.
All profits from the Roy DeCarava collection will benefit the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem.
