Minnesota Prairie Roots

DURING THIS, BLACK HISTORY MONTH, I’ve intentionally read books about slavery, Black people and the Black experience. It’s important to me that I widen my knowledge and understanding. Many of the stories are heartbreaking, almost unbelievable in the mental and physical cruelty inflicted upon Blacks. This is hard stuff to read. But it is in the hard stuff that we begin to fully comprehend the importance of empathy, kindness, compassion and the need to stand strong against that which is hateful, hurtful and oppressive.

This week, though, I read a Black-focused book which inspired and uplifted me. It’s a children’s picture book, Everywhere Beauty Is Harlem: The Vision of Photographer Roy Decarava. The book, written by Gary Golio and illustrated by E.B. Lewis, won the 2025 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Award.

This book resonates with me personally and professionally in telling the story of 1940s world famous photographer Roy DeCarava, unknown to me until I read this book. Trained in the arts and in photography, he would go on to photograph everyday life in his native Harlem via work for the Works Progress Administration Project, fellowships and more. He worked as a photographer for major publications, has/had his photos featured in exhibits and art museums, became an art professor… And he was Black.

But what I love most about this story is that DeCarava aimed to photograph everyday life, everyday scenes, everyday people in the streets of Harlem. He shows life in raw reality. He worked back in the days of film, admittedly much more challenging than shooting with a digital camera. I started with film, too. You often get only one chance to take a photo. No firing off shots. No digital manipulation. Just a single, unedited print.

I will never match the talent of DeCarava. But I do share his focus. I also aim to photograph the ordinary, the everyday, right where I live (or mostly in southern Minnesota). Like him, I notice details. The light. The moments. The expressions. The people, scenes, settings and events that define a place. The anything that might make for an interesting photo.

Unlike DeCarava, my roots are rural. I’ve only ever been to New York City once, while in college. I was awed by the skyscrapers, the street vendors, Chinatown and men hurrying along Wall Street in leisure suits. (This was in 1977.) But I have no desire to return to a place that feels too closed in, too busy, too chaotic.

Yet, Harlem in Upper Manhattan was DeCarava’s home, where he found the subjects of his photos. Everywhere Beauty Is Harlem gives a snapshot of the images this photographer snapped. A man on the subway. A boy drawing on the sidewalk with chalk. Black and brown children dancing in water spraying from a fire hydrant.

Beyond the visuals, the story in this children’s picture book encompasses the essence of DeCarava’s photographic focus on the everyday and the ordinary. I really ought to buy a copy of this book for my personal library. If you want to understand my photographic work, then read this multi award-winning children’s picture book. But, more importantly, read this book to learn about a world famous Black photographer whose talent for visual storytelling is a gift to all of us. To see the world through his eyes presents life as it is. Real. Raw. Unedited.

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FYI: I encourage you to also check out the photography of New York City photographer Keith Goldstein, whose work I follow on his blog, “For Earth Below.” His street photography has opened my eyes to humanity in a way that I never see here in southern Minnesota. His talent is remarkable. Goldstein, I think, works much like Roy DeCarava did, with his camera focused on the everyday, the ordinary. And therein both have found the extraordinary.

© Copyright 2025 Audrey Kletscher Helbling