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You knew he was getting serious about his craft again when the alcohol and the revelry abated. Ensconced in pensive quietude—he abhorred solitude, yet, in his soul, he remained ever alone—he’d position a ruled yellow legal pad upon his writing board and, with his bold, refined penmanship, begin to inscribe a realm that revered his inner vision and those who’d passed on.
The deceased remained perpetually in Owen’s thoughts—Owen Dodson, a wordsmith, play director, and former educator at Howard University, who was the first to helm James Baldwin’s initial theatrical work, “The Amen Corner,” back in 1955. (The drama department at Howard resisted its production owing to Baldwin’s characters utilizing “Black English” at a juncture when a mid-Atlantic accent was the standard, but Dodson proceeded regardless.)
That occurred considerably prior to my acquaintance with Dodson, in the early seventies, around the age of fourteen. We were introduced via a woman he’d befriended since their grade school days in Brooklyn—by then an educator alongside my mother, who, similar to my mother, perceived in me a promising future as a writer. Soon after, Dodson extended an invitation for me to visit his abode and collect certain books he intended to give away; eventually, our dynamic evolved, transforming my random giver into my intricate counselor. I dedicated significant after-school hours in his beautifully appointed residence on West Fifty-first Street, garnering immense knowledge. I witnessed spectacles I had only previously encountered in books or my imagination: exquisite Cocteau illustrations, Victorian-era divans, freestanding candelabras reminiscent of a nineteenth-century stage production. Dodson further boasted a vast assembly of art and photography volumes, notably a first print of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s “The Decisive Moment,” as well as a volume by and about a photographer previously unfamiliar to me, a figure with a Dutch-sounding surname: James Van Der Zee.
“The Van Der Zee Men, Lenox, Massachusetts,” 1908.
Bearing the title “The World of James Van Derzee,” the publication, released in 1969 and showcasing a considerable quantity of Van Der Zee’s portrayals of Black individuals in the early twentieth century, featured a cover that seized my imagination as intensely as the image of a Matisse arrangement gracing the Cartier-Bresson edition. Van Der Zee’s cover depicted four well-dressed Black men sporting bowler hats. Three were adorned with bow ties, whereas the fourth, an older man distinguished by a notable gray mustache, sported a necktie and a waistcoat, complete with a timepiece nesting inside. I did not perceive that these gentlemen had dressed specifically for the camera; conversely, they were exhibiting the grace inherent in commonplace formality. The image bore a tinted, sepia hue, yet, even through that veil, I detected the men’s ease in each other’s company—a comfort I had yet to experience.
I yearned to comprehend everything concerning these men. (I only subsequently ascertained that it was a depiction of Van Der Zee, his brothers, and their father.) With artistry and sketching, one generally desires insight into the originator initially; with photography, the subject acts as the draw. The foremost photographers construct their compositions with a manner of awed humility: Observe this! And what Van Der Zee sought for us to discern in that specific image, alongside all the others I beheld then, was the potential for the extraordinary and the ordinary to coexist within a solitary frame, and his pronounced fascination with all elements therein, even the departed.
Portrait of Van Der Zee’s mother, Susan, after her death.
Van Der Zee entered this world in Lenox, Massachusetts, during 1886. His parents had migrated, in prior years, from New York, where they functioned as a maid and a manservant for Ulysses S. Grant. It is inferred they relocated to Massachusetts seeking an enhanced existence for their lineage. (They shared six progeny.) The twosome prospered in Lenox, ultimately possessing their familial residence, paralleled by Van Der Zee’s paternal grandparents, who resided nearby.
Black families were scant in Lenox; nonetheless, the Van Der Zees cultivated their individual ethnic collective. Multiple offspring exhibited artistic leanings: one daughter pursued draftsmanship; others, including James, cultivated musical pursuits. By 1906, aged twenty, James, then a burgeoning artist, navigated his course to New York, where he undertook employ as a waiter and elevator operator, before inaugurating his inaugural commercial studio, situated on 135th Street, within Harlem, by 1916. Consequently, he acknowledged, as disclosed to photographer Reginald McGhee, that “it was notably simpler to fabricate an image utilizing ‘the compact apparatus’ than with paints and brushes.” He embraced the photographic medium with fervor frequently connected with amateur enthusiasts; nonetheless, in actuality, even his initial photographs exude distinctiveness, embodying the labor of a romantic ethnographer, directed by intuition, wonderment, and personal imperative, as opposed to formal professionalism.
It was in Harlem that Van Der Zee captured his currently celebrated photographs encompassing an extensive spectrum of subjects, spanning Black matriarchs, theatrical personalities, partnered couples, brides, governmental figures, and fashion aficionados. He relocated to 272 Lenox Avenue and, in due course, garnered renown as Harlem’s “picture-taking man.” His moodily illuminated, predominantly monochrome depictions endure as a potent portrayal of a realm that was not so much isolated from the downtown white society but instead unconcerned with its existence.
“I could consistently perceive beauty where it was imperceptible,” Van Der Zee communicated to artist Camille Billops during 1978. “And I contemplated, as long as they possessed a duo of eyes, a nose, and a mouth, well, I held the capacity to improve their appearance.” While he potentially enhanced his subjects beyond their self-perception, he fostered—evident within the images—their sense of contentment. During those transient moments within his studio, there existed no apprehension of criticism or detestation; the domain he sculpted via his large-format apparatus stood as benevolent and affectionate as the alternate reality was not.
During 1976, Owen Dodson accompanied his sister, Edith, for a sitting with Van Der Zee. (By then, Van Der Zee resided on West Ninety-fourth Street, having been ousted from his domicile and studio situated on Lenox Avenue. “We encountered adversity with a legal representative purportedly acting on our behalf,” he confided in Billops, “resulting in the loss of our residence of forty-three years to the financial institution.”) Within the portrait, Dodson, adorning what Marianne Moore might characterize as a “minimal” hat, is perched upon a chair (identical to the regal chair artist Jean-Michel Basquiat occupied for his portrayal some years following). He firmly grasps an armrest of the chair while Edith stands, grinning, adjacent to him. Subsequently, Dodson divulged that he had clutched the chair securely to avert being transported back to the nineteen-twenties. In effect, the singular component within the image recognizable as belonging to its era is Edith’s impeccably groomed Afro.
I surmise the sitting was facilitated by Billops, an intimate of Dodson’s. Among all the alluring women who frequented him, she stood as the most arresting. Hailing from Los Angeles, Billops embodied the world. Her cosmetic artistry evoked Nefertiti—all exquisitely shaped lines converging to a point. She routinely braided vibrant strings into her locks. Occasionally, she sported slacks acquired during her global peregrinations, coupled with sophisticated embroidered tops meriting inclusion in any museum’s holdings. She embodied a United Nations in microcosm. She equally served as a connector. Alongside her spouse, the affable and remarkable theatre scholar James Hatch, whose essential anthologies significantly sustained Black theatre, she undertook and documented dialogues with playwrights and artists within their loft, during afternoons invariably imbued with the vitality of discovery.
There had been a resurgence of appreciation for Van Der Zee’s oeuvre in 1969, concurrent with the Met’s presentation of its controversial “Harlem on My Mind” exhibit—his contribution surpassing any other artist featured—yet he lingered in relative obscurity beyond artistic and photographic circles. I am confident that Billops sought to rectify this inequity, concurrent with impelling Dodson to recommence authorship (he had not released a book since 1970) and to perceive integration within a world—the realm of poetry—that was perpetually advancing.
The resultant endeavor, “The Harlem Book of the Dead” (recently re-released, featuring a postscript by Karla F. C. Holloway), encompassed a compilation of Van Der Zee’s sepulchral depictions, images of the deceased, frequently accompanied by superimposed spiritual symbolism: infants reposing within coffins adorned with projections of Jesus and floating flowers; a widow garbed in somber attire, softly gazing into the void, beside her husband’s agape casket; a boy presenting an image of his animated self juxtaposed with his lifeless counterpart; a youthful couple smiling upon their expired offspring, nestled within the father’s arms; a beauty flaunting elongated tresses and pallid skin, nearly enveloped by the opulent silk upon which she reclines, and, hovering above, a winged celestial being. In parallel to Van Der Zee’s aspiration to enhance the visage of his living subjects, he aimed for demise—or, more precisely, sorrow—to manifest more favorably than reality dictated. It fell upon Dodson to articulate words corresponding to these visages. He toiled over those poems, during my era of frequent visitation, imbued with a form of elation—the photographs had activated dormant voices within his psyche and spirit, and, as he recited the verse ultimately accompanying the depiction of that young woman within the excessively adorned coffin, I apprehended that he was composing about himself:
I had a river in my mind
Where I had drowned myself
So many times I felt sharp flesh
Of water underneath
My eyelids; and between my toes
The minnows smuggle time
To hoard it where all shells begin
To grow what children on the shore
Have always begged to listen to.
I remained a youth, and I had yet to witness such intimate involvement in the creation of a book. On occasion, Dodson would summon me at my residence to articulate a recent verse—“Child, lend an ear to this”—and I discerned the fervor he harbored for the undertaking as well. Ensconced within his parlor, or upon the bed within his guest quarters, I recollect observing and scrutinizing these peculiar images, possessing the attributes of a hallucination or a reverie—the exclusive location where the animated and the departed perpetually reunite.
From the extended exchange Billops conducted with Van Der Zee, interspersed throughout the tome, I gleaned that he was regularly commissioned by the bereaved to capture photographs of their cherished individuals within mortuaries, and that the captivating elements of artistic direction occasionally furnished by the families—a departed man grasping a periodical, as if engaged in reading, as an instance—were purposed to render the deceased seemingly less deceased. For his endeavors, Van Der Zee garnered his standardized remuneration—thirty-five dollars per shot.
One image that captivated my attention was a wide-lens shot encompassing a cadaver within a coffin flanked by a couple cloaked in dark attire. Van Der Zee incorporated a celestial figure above the couple positioned to the right, yet my focus persisted in gravitating toward the inherent motion within the image: both women depicted had subtly redirected their gazes at the precise moment of exposure. Did the deceased individual undergo heightened mortification by virtue of the showcased motion, of vitality? To the image’s left, these fragments penned by Dodson are inscribed:
The dead are the signs
Of our cross;
The bury-hour:
Our living crucifixion.
Dodson would sometimes integrate Van Der Zee’s recollection of a specific sitting within his authorship. At alternate junctures, his verses enacted ventriloquism for the permanently muted. His annotations imparted upon the book the ambiance of a silent film, replete with a sequence of image, inscription, image, each enriching its successor. And as the writing accumulated—even in those times, I recognized this as Dodson’s quintessential poetic output—so did the metaphysical inquiries provoked by the pictures and verses within me: What delineates a visual account of the deceased? Does the subjective expanse of language possess equivalent strength or pertinence compared to the tangible essence of the photographs?
I did not harbor dread for the depictions themselves; rather, I sensed my essence spiraling within a form of vortex as I examined them, notably upon beholding the depictions of infants. Within a particular instance, an infant clutched a feeding implement it would never utilize. I was devoid of understanding pertaining to postmortem photography during that era, and, in likelihood, so was Van Der Zee. Yet, I questioned: By rendering mortality—such an intimate substitution of existence for non-existence—so openly, were we paying tribute to the deceased? Or to our individual selves? Who authorized our possession of the chronicles of the departed?
I am unaware of the origin of the proposition to enlist Toni Morrison in composing the preface to “The Harlem Book of the Dead.” I infer that Dodson extended a call to her. She had functioned as his student at Howard, during his professorship within the theatre department. He recalled her as “an exceptional actress”; manifestly, he intuited that her capacities were limitless. In her concise introduction, Morrison articulated, “That this notable convergence of Black subject, Black poet, Black photographer, and Black artist centers upon the deceased is significant, for it echoes the African assertion: ‘The Ancestor persists as long as remembrance endures.’ ” The book exerted a considerable impression upon Morrison. Years onward, upon opening her novel “Jazz,” from 1992, I recognized within Morrison’s account of “uncanny” affection, a narrative conveyed via one of Van Der Zee’s photographs. It constitutes a depiction of a maiden reclined within a coffin, her head garlanded with floral arrangements, with supplementary blooms adorning her chest. In the explanatory caption, Van Der Zee stated:
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 . . . 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 the flowers on her chest.
Morrison christened her Dorcas, and, akin to the woman portrayed within Dodson’s accompanying verse—“They lean over me and say: / ‘Who deathed you who’ ”—the expiring maiden declines to implicate her paramour. Consequently, Dorcas communicates to the populace that she and her assailant shall remain perpetual paramours, encompassing the present and the eternal.
Sourse: newyorker.com
