During the 1920s and 1930s, VanDerZee enjoyed a reputation as Harlem's preeminent portrait photographer, catering to everyone from proud parents, shopkeepers, and newlyweds to such luminaries as Marcus Garvey, Bill Robinson, and Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. VanDerZee's career spanned more than seventy years, but his work first achieved widespread recognition only in 1969, when it was included in the Metropolitan Museum's controversial exhibition, "Harlem on My Mind."
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Inscription: Signed and inscribed by the artist in the negative, recto CR, vertically: "N. Y. C. // VANDERZEE [underlined] // 1924; stamped [twice] in blue ink, verso C and BR, both upside-down: "The Guarantee Photo Studio // 109 West 135th St., N. Y. C."
The James Van Der Zee Institute
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Photograph: A Selection of Recent Acquisitions".
New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, The Arsenal. "Selected Works by Black Artists from the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art," February 7–March 30, 1979, no catalogue.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Photographs from the Museum's Collection," December 4, 1984–March 17, 1985.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Johnson Gallery, Selections from the Collection 28," January 9 - May 13, 2001.
Art Institute of Chicago. "James VanDerZee, Photographer of Harlem," January 24, 2004–April 25, 2004.
Oklahoma City Museum of Art. "Harlem Renaissance," February 5, 2009–April 19, 2009.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Johnson Gallery, Selections from the Collection 54," August 17, 2010–January 17, 2011.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism," February 25–July 28, 2024.
McGhee, Reginald. The World of James Van DerZee: A Visual Record of Black Americans. New York: Grove Press, 1969. p. 93.
Willis-Braithwaite, Deborah. VanDerZee: Photographer, 1886–1983. New York: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 1993. p. 92.
Murrell, Denise, ed. The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2024. pl. 93, p. 241.
James Van Der Zee (American, Lenox, Massachusetts 1886–1983 Washington, D.C.)
1920s
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