African American Almanac by Lean'tin Bracks

Author:Lean'tin Bracks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Visible Ink Press
Published: 2012-04-13T16:00:00+00:00

James Van Der Zee (1886–1983)

Photographer

James Van Der Zee was born on June 29, 1886, in Lenox, Massachusetts. His parents had moved there from New York in the early 1880s after serving as maid and butler to Ulysses S. Grant, who then resided on 34th Street in New York City. The second of six children, James grew up in a family of creative people. Everybody painted, drew, or played an instrument; so it was not considered out of the ordinary when, upon receiving a camera in 1900, Van Der Zee became interested in photography.

By 1906 Van Der Zee had moved to New York, married, and was taking odd jobs to support his growing family. In 1907 he moved to Phoetus, Virginia, where he worked in the dining room of the Hotel Chamberlin in Old Point Comfort, Virginia. During this time he also worked as a photographer on a part-time basis. In 1909 he returned to New York.

By 1915 Van Der Zee had a photography job as assistant in a small concession in the Gertz Department Store in Newark, New Jersey. With the money he saved from this job he was able to open his own studio on 135th Street in 1916. World War I had begun and many young soldiers came to the studio to have their pictures taken. Over the course of a half-century, James Van Der Zee recorded the visual history of Harlem. His subjects included Marcus Garvey, Daddy Grace, Father Divine, Joe Louis, Madame Walker, and many other famous African Americans.

In 1969 the exhibition Harlem On My Mind, produced by Thomas Hoving, then director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, brought Van Der Zee international recognition. Van Der Zee died in 1983.

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