James Van Der Zee’s studio

[2077 7th Avenue, now Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, Harlem, New York City, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Just a storefront among storefronts, but this storefront was one location for the studio of the celebrated photographer James Van Der Zee (1886–1983). There he is in the 1940 Manhattan telephone directory:


[Click for a larger view.]

In front of the store stands a display case full of photographs. The sign suggests an enterprise with several parts: PICTURE FRAMING / PHOTOS / HEMSTITCHING NOTARY. You can see the sign with greater clarity in a photograph by Van Der Zee himself, accompanying this New York Times article (gift link).

Three choice sources for Van Der Zee browsing:

~ A 2019 exhibition at the Howard Greenberg Gallery (click on Thumbnails)

~ A 2022 exhibition at the National Gallery of Art

~ The Metropolitan Museum of Art

No. 2077 today: Delhi Masala, an Indian restaurant.

I’ll add one more detail: a 1926 Van Der Zee photograph was the inspiration for Toni Morrison’s Jazz (1992). The photograph appears in The Harlem Book of the Dead (1978), a collection of Van Der Zee’s funeral portraits, for which Morrison wrote the foreword. Van Der Zee’s caption for the photograph:

She was the one I think was shot by her sweetheart at a party with a noiseless gun. She complained of being sick at the party and friends said, “Well, why don’t you lay down?” and they taken her in the room and laid her down. After they undressed her and loosened her clothes, they saw the blood on her dress. They asked her about it and she said, “I’ll tell you tomorrow, yes, I’ll tell you tomorrow.” She was just trying to give him a chance to get away. For the picture, I placed flowers on her chest.

You can see the photograph in this New York Times article (gift link).

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)