VAN DER ZEE, JAMES

born June 29, 1886, Lenox, Mass., U.S. died May 15, 1983, Washington, D.C. A Couple Wearing Raccoon Coats With a Cadillac, Taken on West 127th Street, photograph by in full James Augustus Joseph Van Der Zee African-American photographer whose portraits of black New Yorkers chronicled the Harlem Renaissance. The discovery of his archived prints and negatives in 1967 led to widespread interest in his work. Van Der Zee shot his first photographs as a boy in Lenox, Mass. By 1906 he had moved with his father and brother to Harlem in New York City, working as a waiter and elevator operator. In 1915 Van Der Zee moved to Newark, N.J., where he had taken a job in a portrait studio, first as a darkroom assistant and then as a portraitist. He returned to Harlem the following year, setting up a portrait studio at a music conservatory that his sister had founded in 1911. In 1918 Van Der Zee and his second wife, Gaynella Greenlee, launched the Guarantee Photo Studio in Harlem. The business boomed during World War I, and the photographs he shot from this period until 1945 have demanded the majority of critical attention. Among his many renowned subjects were poet Countee Cullen, dancer Bill Bojangles Robinson, and black-nationalist leader Marcus Garvey. Van Der Zee worked predominantly in the studio and used a variety of props, including architectural elements, backdrops, and costumes, to achieve stylized tableaux vivants in keeping with late Victorian and Edwardian visual traditions. Sitters often copied celebrities of the 1920s and '30s in their poses and expressions, however, and Van Der Zee retouched negatives and prints heavily to achieve an aura of glamour. After World War II, Van Der Zee's fortunes declined with those of Harlem. He made ends meet with occasional commissions and with a photo restoration sideline. By the time his collection of negatives and prints was discovered by a representative of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1967, the Van Der Zees were nearly destitute. In early 1969 his photos were featured as part of the museum's successful Harlem on My Mind exhibition, which showcased life during the Harlem Renaissance in a variety of media. Van Der Zee won increasing attention throughout the 1970s, and from late in that decade until his death in 1983, he photographed many celebrities, promoted his work in shows around the country, and was the subject of books and films. In 1993 a retrospective of his work was held at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.