James van der Zee

James Van Der Zee was born in 1886 in Lenox, Massachusetts. He bought his first camera as a teenager and set up a darkroom at home, becoming one of the first photographers small town New England. In 1906 he moved with his father to Harlem, New York City, where he worked as a waiter and elevator operator. In 1915 Van Der Zee started working in a portrait studio, first in Newark, New Jersey, then back in Harlem. In 1916 he set up his own studio, and throughout the next twenty-five years produced thousands of portraits and documented Harlem's growing middle class, a time known as the Harlem Renaissance. Since 1970 Van Der Zee's works have been exhibited widely, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Delaware Art Museum (Wilmington) and the National Portrait Gallery (Washington). James Van Der Zee died in 1983, at the age of 96, in Washington, DC.