JAMES VAN DER ZEE (American, 1886-1983), “Self-portrait,” 1931 (gelatin silver print). | © James Van Der Zee Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
A VAST COLLECTION representing the legacy of Harlem Renaissance photographer James Van Der Zee (1886-1983) is housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The expansive holdings include about 20,000 prints made in Van Der Zee’s lifetime, 30,000 negatives, studio equipment, manuscript materials, and other ephemera. Candice Yates (below right) recently joined the Photographs department at The Met as senior research associate of the James Van Der Zee Archive. In the new role, Yates will lead a team comprised of two additional research associates charged with processing the expansive archive and making it accessible to the public. Her appointment was effective June 10.
“Having the opportunity to immerse myself in Van Der Zee’s world, and learn how truly multi-faceted he was as an artist, is a dream come true,” Yates said in an email statement to Culture Type, shared via The Met’s communications department.
Documenting social and political occasions, community celebrations, and family moments, Van Der Zee’s photographs have come to represent Black life in 20th century Harlem. Active from the 1910s to the early 1980s, he made tens of thousands of images—capturing weddings, funerals, social clubs, sports teams, parades, and an array of portraits. Over time, he built an incredible archive critical to the study of American photography, the history of New York City, and the culture of Harlem and its Black residents.
“Having the opportunity to immerse myself in Van Der Zee’s world, and learn how truly multi-faceted he was as an artist, is a dream come true.”
— Candice Yates
IN DECEMBER 2021, The Met announced the establishment of the James Van Der Zee Archive initiative in collaboration with the Studio Museum in Harlem. The Studio Museum brought knowledge and a longstanding history with Van Der Zee to the partnership. For four decades, the Harlem museum had partnered with Donna Van Der Zee, the photographer’s widow, serving as custodian of the materials contained in the archive. Van Der Zee is represented in the Studio Museum’s collection by approximately 6,000 prints and 7,000 negatives. The Met acquired through a gift/purchase agreement about 14,000 prints and 23,000 negatives from Mrs. Van Der Zee and the James Van Der Zee Institute, which has been inactive since the 1980s.
The Met serves as copyright holder for all of the Van Der Zee works across all media, and is maintaining, conserving, and storing the negatives. The Studio Museum has retained ownership of its Van Der Zee holdings, although they are now located at The Met. In March 2022, the Mellon Foundation provided The Met with a $2 million grant supporting the “preservation, conservation, research and cataloging” of the archive. Digitization is chief among the many tasks involved with processing the materials in the archive in order to open it up to artists, curators, historians, and the wider public.
Yates is leading this work. She joined The Met from Christie’s New York where she worked for three years as a cataloger in the Photographs department (2021-24). Earlier, she spent more than a decade as a registrar at Crozier Fine Arts in New Jersey. Her academic background includes an undergraduate degree in art history from Rutgers University and a master’s in photographic preservation and collection management from the University of Rochester (2019). The Met said Yates “brings to her role a deep passion for, and knowledge of, the history of African American photography and a strong background working with photographic collections.”
Candice Yates “brings to her role a deep passion for, and knowledge of, the history of African American photography and a strong background working with photographic collections.”
JAMES VAN DER ZEE (American, Lenox, Massachusetts 1886–1983 Washington, D.C.), “Couple, Harlem,” 1932, printed later (gelatin silver print, Image: 8 × 9 15/16 inches / 20.3 × 25.2 cm). | James Van Der Zee Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Gift of Donna Van Der Zee, 2021, 2021.446.1.2
THE MET’S RECENT EXHIBITION “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism” featured 17 photographs from the Van Der Zee Archive. One of his best known images was among those on display, a 1932 photo of a nattily dressed couple posing with a fancy car. Denise Murrell, The Met’s curator-at-large, Office of the Director, organized the exhibition and spoke about Van Der Zee’s work in a video tour.
“James Van Der Zee was the leading photographer of the Harlem Renaissance, making literally thousands of photographs for decades beginning in the 1920s that just capture everything that was happening during the Harlem Renaissance and for decades after. And this photograph here is just an iconic Van Der Zee photo. We see this stylish, elegantly dressed young Black couple in full-length fur coats, and they’re posed on a street of elegant Harlem townhouses, getting out of their very new car,” she said.
“This was a limited edition Cadillac V16. And so what he’s capturing is the emergence of an urbane, economically affluent middle class in the new Black cities like Harlem. And this type of imagery simply was not seen in American popular culture until this particular moment. This is a couple that is fully in control of their own image.”
Murrell added: “Van Der Zee made one of the most extensive records of the Black, middle, and upper classes. And so he’s showing every other aspect of this community life as well. We see street processionals, the various social clubs, uniformed soldiers, and we go into the residences, people from across the social stratum. So the entire sweep of Harlem life was James Van Der Zee’s subject.” CT
IMAGE: Above right, Candice Yates. | Courtesy Candice Yates via Metropolitan Museum of Art
FIND MORE about Candice Yates on her website and Instagram
FIND MORE about Candice Yates in a pair of Christie’s videos. She talks with New York photographer Anthony Barboza in February 2024 and explores the work 19th century African American photographers Augustus Washington and James Presley Ball in March 2023
FIND MORE about the James Van Der Zee Archive on Culture Type
FIND MORE Browse photographs by James Van Der Zee in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Jeff L. Rosenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Joyce Frank Menschel Curator in Charge of the Department of Photographs, and Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, explore the photographic archive of James Van Der Zee (1886–1983) and discuss the significance of his practice (December 2022). | Video by Metropolitan Museum of Art
BOOKSHELF
“VanDerZee: Photographer 1886-1983” documents a landmark survey of James Van Der Zee presented at Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery more than three decades ago. “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism” was published to accompany the recent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Curated by Denise Murrell, the show featured a selection of photographs by Van Der Zee from the museum’s archive. “A Nimble Arc: James Van Der Zee and Photography” by Emily Boone “recasts our understanding not only of this celebrated figure but of photography within the arc of quotidian Black life. Boone argues that Van Der Zee’s work exists at the crossroads of art and the vernacular, challenging the distinction between canonical art photographs and the kind of output common to commercial photography studios.” For children, also consider “Take a Picture of Me, James Van Der Zee!”
