The sweet flypaper of life
The Sweet Flypaper of Life (1955) is the result of a collaborative effort between photographer Roy DeCarava and writer Langston Hughes. Their unique fusion of words and images provides an opportunity to examine how the two media can be brought together to form composite modes of expression. DeCarava and Hughes’s work reveals their deft command of both African American and Western cultural practices, which they employ to forward their vision of black Americans as full participants in American life and culture.
African Americans, Afro-Americans, Description and travel, Pictorial works, Views
Roy DeCarava, Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes

(1902-1967)
Writer, editor, lecturer

Langston Hughes achieved fame as a poet during the burgeoning of the arts known as the Harlem Renaissance, but those who label him "a Harlem Renaissance poet" have restricted his fame to only one genre and decade. In addition to his work as a poet, Hughes was a novelist, columnist, playwright, and essayist, and though he is most closely associated with Harlem, his world travels influenced his writing in a profound way. Langston Hughes followed the example of Paul Laurence Dunbar, one of his early poetic influences, to become the second African American to earn a living as a writer. His long and distinguished career produced volumes of diverse genres and inspired the work of countless other African American writers.
--From Gale Cengage Learning Free resources