James Van Der Zee

With unassuming intimacy, James Van Der Zee captures a quiet moment outdoors with his wife, Kate, and daughter, Rachel, in Lenox, Massachusetts. Van Der Zee’s early work documented the Black community within his small town before he moved to Harlem in the early 1910s and began his acclaimed portraiture work of the Harlem Renaissance. His celebratory images of the growing Black middle class challenged prevailing narrow representations of Black communities and served as sources of pride for sitters and viewers alike.