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A Nimble Arc

James Van Der Zee and Photography

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The Visual Arts of Africa and Its Diasporas

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Book

Pages: 288

Illustrations: 76 color illustrations, 1 map

Published: September 2023

Author: Emilie Boone

While James Van Der Zee is widely known and praised for his studio portraits from the Harlem Renaissance era, much of the diversity and expansive reach of his work has been overlooked. From the major role his studio played for decades photographing ordinary people and events in the Harlem community to the inclusion of his photographs in the landmark Harlem on My Mind exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1969, Van Der Zee was a foundational Black photographer whose work illustrates the shifting ways photography serves as a constitutive force within Black life. In A Nimble Arc, Emilie Boone considers Van Der Zee’s photographic work over the course of the twentieth century, showing how it foregrounded aspects of Black daily life in the United States and in the larger African diaspora. Boone argues that Van Der Zee’s work exists at the crossroads of art and the vernacular, challenging the distinction between canonical art photographs and the kind of output common to commercial photography studios. Boone’s account recasts our understanding not only of this celebrated figure but of photography within the arc of quotidian Black life.

Praise

“In her innovative and timely revisiting of the work of America’s most iconic Black photographer, James Van Der Zee, Emilie Boone reinvigorates the practice of this singular artist through a careful and considered unpacking of the social function his images served as quotidian objects. A Nimble Arc takes readers on a captivating journey into the social life of Van Der Zee’s photographs in ways that allow us to see iconic images anew and recognize the enduring value of photography as a community-building project that exceeds the intentions and aspirations of any individual photographer.” - Tina M. Campt, author of A Black Gaze: Artists Changing How We See

“This is a truly exceptional work. Exquisitely written, researched, and argued, A Nimble Arc is the most comprehensive study of James Van Der Zee’s practice in almost thirty years. I predict a long and fruitful life for this book.” - Kellie Jones, author of South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s

"A Nimble Arc broadens James Van Der Zee’s legacy amid a savvied history of twentieth-century Harlem." - Meg Nola, Foreword Reviews

“A Nimble Arc reframes Van Der Zee’s photographic practice as part of a Black quotidian and a Black diaspora committed to new forms of Black visibility. It is an original study that offers new insights into Van Der Zee’s long career and demonstrates the efficacy of a scholarly method that draws simultaneously from the fields of art history, visual culture studies, and Black studies.”

- Shawn Michelle Smith, Winterthur Portfolio

"By disrupting a simplistic understanding of Van Der Zee, Boone provides a more nuanced, diasporic, and empowering picture of one of the most significant image makers of the twentieth century." - Emily Brady, Journal of American Studies

"A lucidly written and compellingly argued study that powerfully illuminates how Van Der Zee’s singular embraces of the iconic and noniconic and fine art and vernacular sensibilities in his photography served to transform the trajectory of his chosen medium." - Isaiah Matthew Wooden, CAA Reviews

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Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Awards Additional Information

Author/Editor Bios

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Emilie Boone is Assistant Professor of Art History at New York University.

Table Of Contents

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List of Illustrations  ix
Acknowledgments  xv
Introduction. To Pivot Lightly: Adding the Vernacular to Art History’s Sight Line  1
1. “More, Many More”: Van Der Zee’s World of Harlem Renaissance Studio Photographers  29
2. The Newspaper and Ubiquity: 1924 Photographs as Moving Objects of the African Diaspora  71
3. A Reframing of Value: Van Der Zee’s Restoration Work of the 1940s and Beyond  113
4. Black Quotidian Experiences: Revisiting the Met’s Harlem on My Mind Exhibition of 1969  153
Coda. To Nimbly Rewind: Fixing a New Constellation of Ideas circa 1994  199
Notes  213
Bibliography  241
Index  259

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Sales/Territorial Rights: World

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Awards

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DUP First Book Fund Recipient

Finalist, 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award John Leonard Prize

Shortlisted for the 2024 Museum of African American History Stone Book Award

Honorable Mention for the James A. Porter Book Award, presented by the Howard University James A. Porter Colloquium

Finalist, 2024 Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP) Book Award

Shortlisted for the 2024 Charles C. Eldredge Prize, presented by The Smithsonian American Art Museum

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