James Van Der Zee
James Van Der Zee ( born June 29, 1886 in Lenox, Massachusetts, USA; † 15 May 1983; Washington, DC, United States) was a colored American photographer of the 20th century.
Life
Van Der Zee grew up as the second of six children in the immediate family context. As a child he learned musical instruments such as the violin or piano playing and learned a lot about the arts. At the age of 14, he has already made in his hometown of photographs of the city and family portraits with a camera presented to him and developed the pictures themselves
After Van Der Zee's move to New York City with his father and brother was the main source of money for music lessons for him. At 29, he worked in the dark room of the department store Gertz in Newark, New Jersey and jumped for his employer, if necessary, as a photographer. In 1917, he made his own studio, Guarantee Photography, on and had immediate success. He belonged to the circle of artists of the 1920s, which was known as the Harlem Renaissance. In 1932 he moved to a larger studio in Harlem, the GGG studio at the Lenox Avenue between 123 and 124 Street. He made his photographs in an opulent frame with exotic architecture and in some cases with clothing that reminded her of the time at the previous turn of the century.
The years of the Great Depression and the advent of miniature cameras forced Van Der Zee get by with passport photos and other orders. After the Second World War, he got some special orders and dealt with the restoration of photographs. Only in old age he and his collection of photographs and negatives of the general public were known. Most photographs of the exhibition Harlem on My Mind at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1969 came from him. In the 1970s, he photographed celebrities such as Bill Cosby, Muhammad Ali and Lou Rawls.