The Modern Concrete Jungle
Fig. 1. James Van Der Zee, Marcus Garvey in a UNIA Parade, 1924. Gelatin silver print, 6 7/16 × 9 7/16 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Introduction: New Visions of Blackness
During the early twentieth-century, African American photographer James Van Der Zee developed a new visual lexicon for Black subjects. Dignified and poised, these images chronicled a culture historically othered by modernism. Unlike Louis Agassiz’s dissective-like imaging of enslaved African Americans or the primitive depictions of colored bodies by some of Van Der Zee’s contemporaries about a century later, Van Der Zee’s work captured a culture in the midst of incredible change. His subjects are not meant to be studied nor dehumanized but rather appreciated. Van Der Zee predominantly worked in Harlem, with some of his most iconic photographs shot during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 30s, creating images of Black people for Black audiences. Two works, in particular, document an artistic progression for visualizing Blackness that is both more accurate and sensitive. Marcus Garvey in a UNIA Parade (Fig. 1) and Couple, Harlem (Fig. 2) both represent the growing concern with immortalizing the concept of the “New Negro,” whether politically prominent like Garvey or economically prosperous like the couple in New York City. This essay will explore the visual immortalization of the “New Negro” and how Marcus Garvey in a UNIA Parade and Couple, Harlem cement the multitude of possibilities for the Black American subject.
Fig. 2. James Van Der Zee, Couple, Harlem, 1932. Gelatin silver print, 7 1/2 × 9 5/16 in, The Museum of Modern Art.
Visual Analysis: The Car and the City
Marcus Garvey in a UNIA Parade centers four figures, three sitting and one standing. The photographer has captured a moment of rest in the midst of a regal-like procession. Like the spectators hanging off the balconies in the background, the viewer focuses solely on the men in and around the car. Juxtaposing the bustling and energetic scene behind them, the photograph’s subjects are remarkably composed. Marcus Garvey, surrounded by his officers, looks straight ahead, a calm expression on his face, seemingly unaware of the cacophonous scene around him. Paying no heed to Van Der Zee’s lens, Garvey is entirely focused on moving ahead, advancing to an unknown location only he seems to be aware of. His place in the backseat of the open car and the donning of extensive military regalia position him as a mighty and noble figure, akin to a leader, or even a king. Garvey’s placement in the car in the middle of an urban street is what directly ties the photograph to Van Der Zee’s later work Couple, Harlem.
Self-assurance permeates Couple, Harlem. On an empty Harlem street, a young Black couple with their spotless Cadillac V-16 takes center stage. The two fashionable figures are bathed in sumptuous and luxurious maxi-length raccoon fur coats. The convertible is so perfect it does not seem like it has ever been driven but rather used as an accessory to signify the couple’s prosperity. The man sits on the passenger side, half of his body in the car while his other half languidly hangs out in a state of complete confidence and tranquility. There is a palpable surety in his direct gaze, while the woman’s attention seems to have been caught by something just outside the bottom right of the composition. Her supposed indifference to Van Der Zee and his act of photographing mirrors Garvey’s. Each subject in both photographs uses a moniker of modernity, the automobile, to offer a then-contemporary view of the different, complex facets of the “New Negro.”
Context and Theoretical Foundation: The “New Negro” as the Antithesis to White Modernism
Modernism dominated Western cultural expression throughout the first half of the twentieth-century. Artistic production became more and more concerned with self-definition and representation. Many white artists used the philosophical principles of modernism to explore what it means to be human in an age of rapid technological innovation and widespread urbanization. Yet, what happens when art is created by those who were generally denied selfhood? Louise Siddons directly asks this by explaining how:
Modernism, in a Euro-American context, has been defined by its relationship to imperialism and the aesthetic forms produced by colonial exchange. A structure that relied on the distinction between self and other, modernism required that the artist identify with the former and appropriate formal devices from the latter … How must we reframe modernism in order to make it a useful category for works produced by artists who were historically interpellated as constituting the 'other' rather than the 'self' in this relationship—by their critics, their patrons, and often, in conflicted and conflicting ways, themselves? [1]
Modernism as a twentieth-century cultural movement is inexplicably tied to systems of ethnic-based exploitation and oppression. In a rejection of these systems, there is a greater emphasis on the presentation of self and personhood by modernist artists who did not fit the Euro-American conception of a person and were reduced to the “other.” In both Marcus Garvey in a UNIA Parade and Couple, Harlem, Van Der Zee pays particular attention to how his subjects are visually defined. These are not people who are suffering under the reductive classification of the “other.” Rather, they are contemporary figures with subjective experiences to be shared and appreciated.
A revolutionary aspect of Van Der Zee’s photography was his ability to document Black urban life. His imaging offers snapshots of his subjects’ lives not commonly seen in photographs of Black people prior to his work. Van Der Zee’s oeuvre would not be possible if not for the First Great Migration as millions of African Americans moved to northern urban centers from the South. One of the most significant reasons for this migratory movement was a greater desire to control one’s life. Traumatized by the brutality of southern Jim Crow laws and economic exploitation, many African Americans saw the North as a mecca untainted by a history of racial persecution. While mostly untrue given the prevalence of major Northern race riots and lynchings during the Great Migration, a search for a better, more prosperous life started to take on greater importance for many Black Americans. The Great Migration became a rejection of racist predetermination. By rejecting the narrow limitations of what defined the Black experience and identity, those part of this migration began to form communities in neighborhoods in major northern cities like Harlem in New York.
Even though Black Americans were considered subaltern by racist systems of oppression, many cultural practitioners, like Van Dee Zee, began to use the principles of modernism to define themselves. The “New Negro,” as they classified themselves, was a direct facet of a new “Modern American” built on industrialization and subsequently increased contact with different groups of people in a contained urban environment. Emilie Boone defines the concept of the “New Negro” as:
group psychology dominated by self-respect and self-reliance under the auspices of racial pride and advancement. During this time, the New Negro ideals of Black cultural uplift were articulated through the visual and literary arts, an engagement with modernity, and a desire to depart from the limiting ways Blacks were presented in American art and the broader popular culture. This new way of being took form through artistic achievement, prideful and respectful representations of well-dressed individuals, and cultural contributions by business owners and community leaders [2].
Van Der Zee created a new way of looking defined by “the auspices of racial pride and advancement,” presenting his subjects in ways that redefined the nearly limitless potential of what Blackness could be.
Web of Meaning
Positioned slightly center right, the star of Marcus Garvey in a UNIA Parade is undoubtedly the composition’s namesake, Marcus Garvey. He was the founder and first President of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and a revolutionary figure for black nationalist and Pan-Africanist politics. Pan-Africanism was an integral component of the “New Negro” self-conception. Through prominent intellectual figures like Garvey or W.E.B Du Bois, African Americans were able to construct a historical narrative that traced the origins of Black culture to the might of ancient Africa, specifically Egypt. By tracing a cultural lineage to Egypt, African Americans could take pride in their heritage. It seems like being able to have a cultural past was vital to the construction of a subjective self.
Van Der Zee positions Garvey as a modern Pharaoh. While a signifier of Garvey’s forward-thinking, the automobile is also reminiscent of the wheeled chariots Egyptian royalty would use for land transportation. Margaret Olin argues that a particular strength of Van Der Zee’s work “does not come from that which was in front of the camera, it lies elsewhere. To find it, we can look in the network of identifications that these photographs establish” [3]. Marcus Garvey in a UNIA Parade lies in a chain of signifiers connecting racial identity to modernity, historical constructions, and a desire to celebrate the subjective experience of Black Americans. Garvey’s parade through the urban metropolis connotes associations with not only power but also success. The spectacle that frames Garvey in the composition negates common conceptions of what Black people could achieve in the US. If anything, the photograph immortalizes Garvey’s attainment of the American Dream, having the power to achieve anything he desires.
Concerned with more material displays of desire and wealth, Couple, Harlem conveys the glamor of aspirationalism for the “New Negro.” Van Der Zee employs the “prideful and respectful representations of well-dressed individuals” to demonstrate the spaces Black figures can occupy in the modern, urban metropolis. Even though the photograph is filled with conspicuous displays of wealth, Van Der Zee resists the trap of celebrating classism that plagued the US, especially given the surrounding context of the Great Depression. Rather than revering the idea of wealth for the sake of it, Van Der Zee chooses to capture a different class of Black Americans uncommon in the popular imagination. Couple, Harlem symbolizes the myriad of economic opportunities that Black people can achieve. Nothing is off-limits in a place like Harlem. The image documents both a lived reality for the two subjects but also what is possible for African Americans. Couple, Harlem works on the viewer’s imagination. Not only does the viewer wonder who this couple is, but also what they do, how they came to Harlem, and why they decided to pose for Van Der Zee. According to Shawn Michelle Smith:
One always brings images to her viewing, a cultural and personal repertoire that shades photographs and shapes seeing. In this way, the imagination inflects and informs viewing on both sides of a photograph, in both projection and introjection. Acts of photographic imagination may be voluntary or involuntary, and they may be expansive and illuminating, or narrow and obscuring [4].
Van Der Zee’s photographs for the UNIA and street portraiture do the necessary work of adding to the viewer’s “cultural and personal repertoire, … shap[ing] seeing” the Other as an actual person with a subjective reality. Marcus Garvey in a UNIA Parade and Couple, Harlem contribute to an expansive web of what it means to be Black in America.
Conclusion
Van Der Zee’s photography is at its core a fight for civil rights, an affirmation of the personhood of each and every one of his many subjects. Even though modernism tried to deny ethnically marginalized groups the privilege of self, Van Der Zee asserts the right of self-definition. His work was born out of the unique historical and social circumstances of race in the urban North. While definitely not a paradise built on racial color blindness, the communities that were able to form in the industrial areas allowed Van Der Zee access to patrons who were politically powerful and wealthy. Through his photography, he was able to document a different experience that did not fetishize pain and trauma. Instead, celebrating the power of certainty.
Notes
[1] Louise Siddons, “African Past or American Present?: The Visual Eloquence of James VanDerZee’s ‘Identical Twins,’” African American Review 46, no. [2/3] (2013): 439-59, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23784069.
[2] Emilie Boone, “Reproducing the New Negro: James Van Der Zee’s Photographic Vision in Newsprint,” American Art 34, no. [2] (2020): 4-29, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/710470?casa_token=G5NKvmb24KYAAAAA:jR4S93sZDYfWHtLBre62nkdh7RGGvePh8vHxANHM99HecvufOwnCyhV_TSePeqxVWaayULQ4OSw.
[3] Margaret Olin, “Touching Photographs: Roland Barthes’s ‘Mistaken’ Identification,” Representation 80, no. [1] (2002): 99-118, https://doi.org/10.1525/rep.2002.80.1.99.
[4] Shawn Michelle Smith, “The Performative Index: James VanDerZee, Roland Barthes, Lorna Simpson, and the Photographic Imagination,” In Photography and Imagination (London: Routledge, 2019), 133-146.
