In 1952, Roy DeCarava became the first African-American artist to be awarded a Guggenheim grant, which he used to continue his work documenting life in Harlem, where he was born and lived. After receiving a less than enthusiastic response from publishers to whom he had shown the pictures, he sought the opinion of Langston Hughes.

Hughes arranged a selection of the photographs into a visual narrative and offered to write a story of family, marriage, and everyday life in Harlem based on this sequence as told by the fictional character Sister Mary Bradley. Hughes is quoted on the back cover as saying, 'We've had so many books about how bad life is, maybe it's time to have one showing how good it is'. There was also a simultaneous issue in cloth with a dust-jacket, but it is the present edition in wrappers that had the greatest impact. In the same year that The Sweet Flypaper of Life was published, DeCarava opened an exhibition space on West 85th Street called 'A Photographer's Gallery' (1955-1957), which was one of the first photography galleries in New York City. Amongst the artists he exhibited were Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Minor White, Harry Callahan, and Berenice Abbott.

First edition; 8vo (181 x 123 mm, 7¼ x 4¾ in); black-and-white photographs printed in gravure by R. R. Donnelly & Sons, Inc., Chicago; photo-illustrated wrappers, printed in black and grey, text in black and white, lightly toned and soiled, spine and edges rubbed, light toning to spine, a very good copy; pp3-98 (collated complete, pagination begins on cover).

Regards sur un siècle de photographie à travers Le Livre 108; The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century pp138-9; The Photobook: A History I,p 242; The Open Book pp160-1.