James Van Der Zee
Photographer · Harlem Renaissance
This portrait honors James Van Der Zee, the quiet architect of Black modernity. Framed through the lens of his own camera, the image collapses time—photographer, subject, and city folded into one deliberate gaze.
Van Der Zee did not document Harlem by accident. He composed it. His work rejected caricature and spectacle, insisting instead on dignity, elegance, and interior life at a moment when Black humanity was routinely denied all three.
Rendered in deep charcoal tones with restrained typography, this piece functions as both tribute and assertion: that Black self-representation is an act of power.
Ideal for libraries, classrooms, studies, and collectors of Harlem Renaissance history.