Carl Van Vechten (1880--1964) began making portraits in 1932. Over three decades he
photographed many of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance, whose accomplishments
dazzled contemporary audiences and transformed American culture in the mid-twentieth century.
Van Vechten wanted to capture the breadth of American culture and was proud of the scope of
his representation of African Americans within it. In 1942, in an article for the National
Association of Colored People’s journal, The Crisis, he wrote, “I have made myself during the
past ten years, perhaps the largest group of photographs of notable Negro personalities ever
made by one man.” Carl Van Vechten photographed visual artists, poets and writers, musicians
and singers, film and theatre actors, boxers, ball players, patrons, attorneys, philosophers,
dancers, and many others. His studio was a crossroads for persons of accomplishment, and his
portraiture shaped a unique, extensive, and above all inclusive catalog of the decades in which he
lived and worked.
The portraits in this exhibition are drawn from two unique portfolios submitted to the National
Endowment for the Arts (NEA) by the Eakins Press Foundation, New York.
Harlem Heroes: Photographs by Carl Van Vechten is organized by the Smithsonian American
Art Museum. The exhibition is presented in celebration of the 2016 Grand Opening of the
National Museum of African American History and Culture.
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The arts were Carl Van Vechten’s life and African American culture was his passion. He met the
writer and NAACP undercover agent Walter White in 1925; White introduced him to artists and
activists of the Harlem Renaissance. Van Vechten immersed himself in African American
literature, art, and poetry, devouring books by day and visiting Harlem by night. He initiated
what would become a decades-long correspondence with the central figures of the movement,
many of whom he later photographed.
For Van Vechten, photography was a way of participating in modernist culture. He did not set
out to make a document of the African American community, and that is what makes his
portraits so singular. He photographed well-known figures of American modernism including
such writers as Gertrude Stein, William Faulkner, and Zora Neale Hurston and dancers Claude
Marchant and Rose McClendon, as well as rising stars like the singers Ruby Elzy and Altonell
Hines; some of these portraits would ultimately be chosen for the portfolio Noble Black Women.
He created a truly inclusive portrait of America at a time when exclusion was the norm. Among
his contemporaries, Carl Van Vechten was unique for his broad reach and rejection of social
restrictions. His portraiture constitutes the most comprehensive photographic vision of American
arts and letters in the middle years of the twentieth century.
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Harlem Heroes: Photographs by Carl Van Vechten
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Carl Van Vechten’s earliest portraits were of close acquaintances, including Walter White and
James Weldon Johnson of the NAACP, nightclub singer Ethel Waters, and actor and singer Paul
Robeson. Van Vechten’s wife, the actress Fania Marinoff, introduced him to her friends in the
theatre; as a result, he was able to photograph Tallulah Bankhead, Cesar Romero, and Jimmy
Stewart. Among the many artists to visit his studio were Romare Bearden, Marcel Duchamp,
Jacob Lawrence, and Georgia O’Keeffe.
Van Vechten’s portraits are up close and direct, focusing on the facial and bodily expression of
his subjects. This proximity was made possible by his early adoption of a hand-held camera,
which infused the conventionality of studio portraiture with the intimacy of the snapshot. His
signature backdrops were inspired by French artist Henri Matisse, who often used colorful,
patterned textiles in his paintings. The modernist sensibility that led Van Vechten to combine
patterned backdrops with a natural style of portraiture was his special contribution to
photography.
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As early as 1979, master printer Richard Benson was at work for Eakins Press Foundation in
New York, making photogravures from negatives shot by Carl Van Vechten. That year, the
Foundation applied for NEA support for Heroes of Harlem, a portfolio of thirty gravure portraits
of African American men. It was intended as the companion to another portfolio, already in
progress, entitled Noble Black Women. The albums were to be produced in an edition of fifty and
distributed by sale and gift to schools, libraries, museums, prisons, and community centers.
When the Eakins Press Foundation applied to the NEA for financial support, its grant application
was accompanied by a prototype of Noble Black Women containing nineteen portraits by Van
Vechten. The portraits were interleaved with printed sheets carrying literary context and
biographical information about each sitter. They are on view in this and the adjacent room. The
NEA awarded the Foundation $10,000 to complete the project.
Most of the portraits seen here are of extraordinary men and women who became legends as
musicians and writers, dedicated themselves to the education of others, changed the course of
American politics, or excelled in a variety of sports. The image here is anomalous; almost
nothing is known about Esther Perkins beyond her relationship to Van Vechten’s cook.
After the Eakins Press Foundation received the NEA grant, it produced a single portfolio,
combining the two, under the title ‘O, Write My Name’: American Portraits, Harlem Heroes.
With its final report to the NEA, the Foundation submitted a second prototype of the still
unfinished portfolio, containing twenty portraits with short biographical texts. Both prototypes
were transferred from the NEA to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 1983. They are
presented here, as originally conceived by the Foundation, for the first time.
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As prototypes, each of the two portfolios presented in this exhibition was a work in progress. The
differences between them offer insights into Richard Benson’s thinking. The separate sheets of
text interleaved with portraits in Noble Black Women have been dropped, for example. In the
prototype of ‘O, Write My Name’, shorter texts appear on the sheet with each portrait, facilitating
their presentation and circulation as an exhibition.
[Du Bois]
The three prints here show several of Benson’s experiments with printing and design. The W. E.
B. Du Bois material is printed on two sheets---one for the portrait and another for the text; these
have been attached to a larger backing sheet. This and the portrait of Howard Swanson, which
hangs on the wall to your left, are also edged with a “frame” made by lightly inking the edges of
the copper plate.
[Fitzgerald]
The Ella Fitzgerald portrait shows another technique, in which a single large sheet was printed
with the portrait; the text, printed on a smaller sheet, was tipped into an embossment. This
method was also used on the Josh White portrait, which hangs in this room.
[Bearden]
The portrait of Romare Bearden is another example of the portrait and text being printed
separately and attached to a backing sheet. This image lacks the inked frame seen in the Du Bois
portrait, as is the case with most of the prints in both portfolios.
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