DeCarava took his earliest photographs as references for his paintings, but by the mid-40s, he’d abandoned the brush altogether. “Through the camera I was able to make contact with the world,” he once said, “and express my feelings about it more directly.” In the darkroom he attempted to conjure the depths and definitions of objects, light and the human form. And he was largely successful. The cumulative effect of the images in “Light Break,” spanning 1948 to 2006, is a meditation on the virtues of patience and commitment to one’s craft. His black-and-white photographs speak to one another, like plates 59 through 67, featuring pairs of men and women in public spaces. They can be read together as a study of intimacy, from various perspectives and distances: an examination of the relationship between physical proximity and emotional closeness.