Unity Athletic and Social Club

James Van Der Zee American

Not on view

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 Met's controversial exhibition, "Harlem on My Mind." He is now recognized as one of this country’s most distinctive photographic portraitists and an important chronicler the culture of the Harlem Renaissance.

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