BMA 1975.22.16

Harlem in the 1920s and early 1930s was an exciting place to be. Black poets, writers, actors, artists, composers, singers, and jazz musicians came together, unleashing their enormous creative talents, and energizing the entire community. The outside world took notice and before long, the forty-five city blocks of New York City became known as the "cultural capital of Black America." Photographer James Van Der Zee captured the extraordinary vitality of Harlem during those marvelous years when, in the words of poet Langston Hughes, "Harlem was in vogue." Today, scholars look upon his photographs as priceless documents of times past.

Van Der Zee was not a New York native. He grew up in Lenox, Massachusetts in a music-loving family. His interest in photography began when, as a fourteen-year old boy, he read a magazine ad offering a simple box camera. All he had to do was sell twenty packets of perfumed sachet for 10¢ apiece. The camera he received as a "prize" was worthless, but reading the instructions piqued his interest. Soon he got a slightly better camera and started taking pictures of friends and family.

Van Der Zee moved to New York City as a young man and supported himself giving music lessons. At age twenty-nine, he took a $5 per week job as a darkroom technician in a photography studio in a New Jersey department store. When his boss was away, Van Der Zee was in charge of posing the customers and taking the photographs. Customers paid only 25¢ for three portraits, so Van Der Zee had to work fast to make the business profitable. Nevertheless, he managed to introduce creative poses and achieved such good results that customers began to prefer his work to that of his boss.

Two years later, in 1917, Van Der Zee opened his own portrait studio in Harlem. It was his first of several studios, well supplied with fine chairs and tables, rugs, floral arrangements, an American flag, a piano, drapes, and hand-painted backdrops that created instant elegance with illusory columns, bookshelves, and fireplace. Van Der Zee could guarantee a dignified setting for every customer who walked into his studio. They came in droves: family groups, soldiers, singers, wedding couples, beautiful women in all their finery. Van Der Zee took so much time with his posing and lighting that he was often unable to complete more than three sittings a day.

"...Mr. Van Der Zee arranged everything. He coaxed his subjects to sit with their legs crossed, their backs straight, a hat cocked to the side, a coat collar turned up, all to convey a studied, almost defiant confidence.... All of them, men, women, and children wear the most stylish clothes, made from the most luxurious fabrics and tailored with the most intricate detailing."

Van Der Zee never produced an unflattering portrait. He considered it part of his job to depict his clients with beauty, dignity, and grace. Sometimes this meant retouching a negative or hand-tinting a photograph:

"...if, by chance, a sleeve was frayed or a button missing, Van Der Zee conveniently hand-painted and corrected the detail. In fact, he touched up imperfections, straightened teeth, sketched a few extra pieces of jewelry, smoothed out skin color - whatever was necessary...."

James Van Der Zee didn't limit his picture-taking business to the inside of his studio. He took his camera out into the streets of Harlem to photograph Marcus Garvey parades, and into the churches to photograph the funerals of the famous. He went into school courtyards to photograph schoolchildren with their nuns and into the barber shops to photograph the barbers at their chairs. He captured the society ladies of the bridge clubs and the top-hatted gentlemen of the mens' social clubs. Police officers, basketball players, religious leaders, and Elks appeared before his lens.

Even while taking photographs out on the street, Van Der Zee paid close attention to the effects of light and texture. In Couple, Harlem, the soft, even, gray tone of the houses makes the car look highly polished and even dazzling by comparison. In the same way, the hard-edge reflections on the metal car accentuate the softness and fluffiness of the fur coats.

Couple, Harlem was not a random snapshot. Van Der Zee loved to arrange his subjects and, no doubt, gave a lot of thought to the position of the couple and the car. Light hits all the important edges: the streak of light at the back of the woman's coat continues the line of the roof and sets her figure apart from the dark car. The narrow edge of light along the brim of the man's hat calls attention to his face inside the darkened car. The light and dark horizontal lines of the running board repeat the horizontal pattern of the steps beyond.

It is probably no accident that the car is parked so that its mid-section lines up exactly with the middle doorway of the group of brownstones behind. Was it also by choice that Van Der Zee chopped off the back and front of the car?

"It's a hard job to get the camera to see it like you see it," he said. "Sometimes you have it just the way you want it, and then you look in the camera and you don't have the balance...."

Perhaps by eliminating the front and back of the car, and having the rear wheel and the shiny spare tire push directly up against the sides of the picture, he got the balance that he wanted.