America Through the Lens by Martin W. Sandler

Author:Martin W. Sandler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Published: 2014-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

For most of his career Van Der Zee worked in relative obscurity, but after his 1969 Harlem on My Mind exhibition many of his photographs, particularly this one, began to be included in photography shows.

In this photograph of a Harlem couple on their wedding day, Van Der Zee inserted a ghostly image of a child to suggest the happy family life that he wished for the newlyweds.

This photograph of an African-American singing group rehearsing was typical of pictures Van Der Zee took to document the creativity and vitaliy that characterized Harlem during the 1920s and ‘30s.

Van Der Zee’s photograph “Wedding Day” reveals his desire to convey the importance of family values in the Harlem community. It is an image that also reveals his commitment to depicting African Americans as cultured and refined people.

By the time World War II ended in 1945, James Van Der Zee had been taking pictures for more than forty-five years. His portrait business in particular had earned him a better living than he might have once imagined. But with the end of the war came the introduction of efficient, easy-to-use personal cameras. People had much less need for professional studio portraits, and Van Der Zee’s fortunes declined dramatically. In order to support himself, he was forced to shoot passport photos and to search for other photography jobs. At the same time, the glory days of Harlem came to an end.

During the next two decades things got even worse for Van Der Zee. By 1967 his work had fallen into obscurity, he had lost his studio, and he and his wife were living in poverty. In that same year, however, a photo researcher at the Metropolitan Museum of Art stumbled upon tens of thousands of Van Der Zee’s photographs that had been given to the museum. In 1969 the Metropolitan staged a major exhibition titled Harlem on My Mind, which featured many of the images the researcher had found. Almost overnight Van Der Zee began to receive national attention, and his fortunes were reversed once again.

Harlem on My Mind had another result as well. During its three-month run, it drew more viewers than almost any other exhibition in the museum’s history. Most visitors were white, but for the first time African Americans came to the Metropolitan not as janitors or other menial laborers but as patrons.

Although Van Der Zee was now eighty-two years old, the attention and acclaim that Harlem on My Mind brought him rekindled his career. Just as, some sixty years before, famous African Americans had flocked to his studio, modern-day black celebrities now sought him out to have their pictures taken, including such highly respected people as Muhammad Ali, Bill Cosby, Cicely Tyson, Ossie Davis, and Ruby Dee.

At ninety-two, Van Der Zee found himself still in demand. “The body wears out,” he told a reporter, “but the mind doesn’t need to.” In his final years he received many honors. He was awarded two honorary doctorate degrees and was named an Honorary Fellow for Life by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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