VOICE 1: To me I look at Harlem as success, always. That’s what I look at it as, it’s success.
VOICE 2: Okay, Harlem to me is a swag we call, right? The Harlem swag. The way we move and groove and do things out here.
VOICE 3: Fashion, music, art…
VOICE 4: It’s very much a part of my history and my heart and who I am now as well as who I will be in the future.
VOICE 5: Baby, we are Harlem! Once you live Harlem, you become—you are Harlem! There is no “in common,” you become Harlem, you become the environment. I am Harlem, baby!
JESSICA LYNNE: Welcome to Harlem Is Everywhere, brought to you by The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
I’m your host, Jessica Lynne. I’m a writer and art critic.
Today we’re focusing on fashion and portraiture during the Harlem Renaissance.
In The Met’s exhibition, The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism, you’ll see the fashions of the time represented in photographs and portraits.
Portraiture has to do with how an artist sees a person. Fashion has to do with how we want others to see us. But both are telling a story and both are giving others the chance to create their own story about how we, as people, see each other.
We’re going to consider artists like James Van Der Zee and William Henry Johnson and talk about why it was so important for Black people to capture and create images of themselves. This movement was an important opportunity for Black people in America to break long standing racist stereotypes to represent their humanity and dignity.
We’ll hear from scholar and curator Bridget R. Cooks…
BRIDGET R. COOKS: What we see when more African American people are creating representations of their own culture is a sense of coolness, assuredness, of beauty, of calm, of reflection, a sense of an inner life.
LYNNE: We’re also talking with Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Robin Givhan to hear how empowering fashion was for people reclaiming their look and style.
ROBIN GIVHAN: If you are someone you know for whom society has determined that you have to fit into a particular box or a particular category, being able to use fashion to express who you are is extraordinarily powerful.
LYNNE: Before we jump in, I’d like to paint a portrait for you… something a little more contemporary.
Critics, especially art critics, tend to get a bad rap: this image of the stuffy, snobby, well-to do White man is kind of enduring. And that’s not me, obviously. I used to worry that I wouldn’t be taken seriously because I didn’t look the part. But then I had to check myself because my look is just as enduring.
I call it “Black Cool.” Think an adult version of Lavender, Matilda’s best friend—too smart for her own good, kind of quirky and bashful, but fly.
If you happen to catch me walking around uptown any day of the week, you might see me with my ’fro out, my gray hair peeking through, just like my mom’s did at my age. After all, I am my mama’s daughter.
You’d also see me in my go-to must-have accessory, a pair of shades. They make me feel invincible. Like I know everything that’s going on, but nobody knows what’s going on with me.
And for six years I’ve had a gold septum ring—it’s a snake. When I got this ring I didn’t think much about it, I just liked it. And to be honest, I can’t imagine my face without this animal anymore.
Whether it’s 1924 or one hundred years later in 2024, whether it’s church attire or the club outfit, one of the things you’ll see in Black style, whether it’s my brand of Black Cool or some of the fashion we’re gonna talk about today: it’s all timeless.
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GIVHAN: We all at some point enter a public sphere where we want people to understand us in a particular way. Sometimes we want people to understand, sort of, the essence of who we are.
LYNNE: That’s Robin Givhan. She’s currently the senior critic-at-large for the Washington Post, where she writes about politics, race, and the arts.
GIVHAN: The Harlem Renaissance has this sort of mythical sensibility, I think, in the culture. And, you know, sort of see these very glamorous intellectual social Black men and women moving through a community of their own, moving through a community that they established—and looking splendid while they were doing it. And there’s a kind of formality in that.
LYNNE: Robin has spent a good portion of her career covering the fashion industry. Just as visual artists made images of this movement and its people, the non-artists, the everyday person, also participated simply in how they dressed and the sartorial story they chose to tell.
GIVHAN: When you look at a lot of the cities that were populated by those members of the generation that were part of the Great Migration, like they had that same kind of sensibility when they dressed. I mean, I think about, you know, my parents and dressing was sort of a part of establishing the degree to which they had self-respect and dignity and aspirations.
LYNNE: Sometimes fashion is dismissed as surface level. But how we choose to present ourselves can be emboldening.
If I have a fresh pair of sneakers on, I feel like I can get anything done. And to me a crisp pair of sneakers are just as comfortable and respectable as any shoe.
Fashion was a way to develop a group identity. Another means to control the narrative for a generation…
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VOICE 7: Fashion, like, it’s my billboard to the world of like, here I am and my opinions.
VOICE 6: I wear, like, subtle colors. And I want people to, like, come to me and feel welcome and comforted and not, like, overwhelmed.
VOICE 7: I like to wear bright colors. I like to have fun. I feel like there’s also this, I don’t know… this idea that men can’t wear colors or they can’t wear bright colors and I like to do that, as well.
VOICE 2: You know what I’m saying, I’m a trendsetter, I set trends. You can’t be me. You can style, but nobody can be me.
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COOKS: There’s so many different approaches that artists of the Harlem Renaissance took to showing who we are.
LYNNE: Meet Bridget R. Cooks. She’s a professor of art history and African American studies at the University of California, Irvine.
COOKS: I teach students about African American artists, the work that they make, and I write about museum exhibitions.
LYNNE: A portrait can be many things, but at its core a portrait is a story. And when we talk about portraiture and the Harlem Renaissance we have to talk about the photographer James Van Der Zee.
James Van Der Zee (American, 1886– 1983), Self-Portrait with Gaynella Greenlee, 1920s. Gelatin silver print, sheet 10 x 8 in. (25.4 x 20.3 cm). James Van Der Zee Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, Louis V. Bell,Harris Brisbane Dick, Fletcher, and Rogers Funds and Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, Alfred Stieglitz Society Gifts, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Gift, Joyce F. Menschel Fund, and Ford Foundation Gift, 2021 (2021.443.31) © James Van Der Zee Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
COOKS: James Van Der Zee was one of the most prolific photographers in American history. He was an important part of the Harlem community. I mean, he took photographs in the 1910s, but then he also took photographs of the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat. It’s kind of incredible, the longevity and the breadth of his career.
GIVHAN: When I think about that time my mind goes immediately to some of those great black-and-white photographs from James Van Der Zee. And the men are in suits and there are these wonderful fedoras with, you know, sort of the sharp brim. And they look effortful. It’s not just sort of thrown together. And there’s a lot of adherence to societal norms. These are not, sort of, rebels in their style sensibility. They’re following a certain template.
LYNNE: Van Der Zee was born in the summer of 1886 in Lenox, Massachusetts. As a teenager his subjects were family members and small town New England life.
I like to imagine the hours he must’ve spent in the homemade dark room at his parents’ house. How under the glow of a red light he must’ve fallen in love with watching images slowly emerge and take shape on the photographic papers. By 1916 he had moved to New York and opened the Guarantee Photo Studio.
COOKS: James Van Der Zee had this amazing studio that Dr. Deborah Willis calls “a studio of transformation.” A place where you could go and imagine who you were and who you wanted to be in that space and have it captured in film for your own edification, but also to share with others, maybe to send back home to show people your success.
LYNNE: Van Der Zee was helping to create a new image of Black life in America. An image counter to the decades of racist depictions that minstrel shows and vaudeville theater had profited from. It was an image that said, “Here we are. Beautiful, determined, thriving and human.” These images articulated the rich inner lives of communities that were taking shape as a result of the Great Migration.
COOKS: He made really incredible portraits, often featured in these annual calendars that he would produce for Harlem patrons. And you can see the creative backdrops that he used indicating a fireplace or a railing of a staircase. And he had all kinds of props, rugs, blankets, lighting, even a combination of backdrops to help create this kind of theater for self-representation.
LYNNE: Many of Van Der Zee’s portraits were commissions. A young couple might visit him at his studio on 135th Street to ask about taking their wedding portrait.
A young soldier might appear in Van Der Zee’s doorway in full uniform, ready to stand proud in front of the camera.
But for all the commissioned portraits there were, of course, many Van Der Zee subjects who caught his eye first. People he saw beauty or mystery in. People he stopped on the street to ask if they wouldn’t mind posing for a picture. People he invited to come to his studio who might’ve never considered themselves the subject of a work of art.
COOKS: There was a photograph that he took simply titled Nude that is of a young, gorgeous Black woman who is nude but presented in a way kind of from the back and the side in a fetal position in front of a fireplace. It’s very tasteful, it’s very quiet. And you can imagine feeling the warmth of this space that she’s in by herself, that she’s having this reflective moment.
James Van Der Zee (American, 1886–1983). Nude, Harlem, 1923. Gelatin silver print, 8 1/8 x 6 3/4 in. (20.7 x 17.2 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of James Van Der Zee Institute, 1970 (1970.539.27) © James Van Der Zee Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
COOKS: And I think it would be very easy to imagine Van Der Zee looking at her and knowing that she’d be beautiful in a photograph. But I do wonder if she saw herself that way and if she felt comfortable posing that way, or if she even felt a kind of release. Like a kind of permission to be beautiful in that photograph in a way that’s totally convincing and is not proud at all.
LYNNE: Van Der Zee also captured historical moments in Harlem. In February of 1919 the 369th Infantry Regiment, nicknamed the Harlem Hellfighters, paraded up Fifth Avenue upon returning home from World War I. This regimental band under the leadership of James Reese Europe were some of the first to bring jazz to Europe.
These brave soldiers in full uniform proudly displaying their regimental colors were immortalized by Van Der Zee as they continued up Lenox Avenue to the cheers of their family and neighbors.
COOKS: He was also, for a time, the official photographer of the Black nationalist Marcus Garvey. And so he has a number of photographs of Garvey on parade as one aspect of the very lively Harlem community in the 1920s.
James Van Der Zee (American, 1886–1983). [Marcus Garvey in a UNIA Parade], 1924. Gelatin silver print, 6 1/2 x 9 1/2 in. (16.4 x 24 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Funds from various donors, 2018 (2018.96) © James Van Der Zee Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
COOKS: But he took photographs of children, of dance classes. He took pictures of Black Jews at the Moorish Zionist Temple of the Moorish Jews. He took photographs of the evangelist Daddy Grace in his church. And he also helped to really create spaces of dignity and grace for characters in Harlem to present themselves.
LYNNE: Van Der Zee took pictures of nearly everyone, but many of the most famous portraits from the Harlem Renaissance were created with oil paint, pastels, and watercolors.
During this time, artistic ideas were crossing the Atlantic back and forth between America and Europe. Laura Wheeler Waring, for example, was born in Connecticut and traveled abroad to Paris to study the works of artists like Monet, Manet, Corot, and Cézanne.
Or Winold Reiss, who was born in Germany but was drawn to America. He found a home in New York creating exquisite portraits of some of the Harlem Renaissance’s most central figures.
Then you have William Henry Johnson, who left South Carolina at the age of seventeen to find a home in Harlem. He traveled to Europe where he painted expressionistic landscapes and was inspired by Modernism. Johnson eventually returned to America and embraced the painting practices of folk art rooted in the South.
There’s a painting of Johnson’s in the exhibition that captures the pride, excitement, and beauty of the Harlem Renaissance. It’s a vibrant portrait of a couple titled Street Life, Harlem.
William Henry Johnson (American, 1901–1970). Street Life, Harlem, ca. 1939–40. Oil on plywood, 45 5/8 x 38 5/8 in. (116.0 x 98.0 cm). Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Harmon Foundation (1967.59.674)
GIVHAN: It’s this great couple, this Black couple, and they’re looking directly at each other. And there’s so many geometric shapes and angles in this picture. And the only way that you know that it’s evening is because there’s sort of a crescent moon. But honestly, it looks more like it’s that moment before sunrise when the moon is in the sky and the sky is getting a little bit lighter. And so I like to think that perhaps they’ve been out all night because they're quite dressed up and they’re looking very funky.
COOKS: I can’t help but notice these incredible hats that both of them are wearing with the feather and the flower. These giant red gloves that go up to the elbow that the woman is wearing. And then these nylons that she has on her legs, which are really emphasized in terms of the difference between her skin color and the color of the nylons. And the way that she’s standing very elegantly in these white shoes with heels.
She’s put something together as an outfit quite deliberately. I can imagine that she feels very stylish and very beautiful next to this handsome man. There’s a coolness to the way that he’s standing in his clothes.
GIVHAN: And he’s got on spats and, you know, a vest underneath his jacket.
COOKS: And Johnson puts them on the street, they’re part of a kind of cosmopolitan universe. They’re contemporary actors in modern life and they are dressed the part.
One of the interesting things about portraiture of this time is that not everybody is shown smiling. You know, this had to do with wanting to turn away from stereotypical images of African American people as servants, as uncles, as zip coons, as sambos.
You know, part of the uniforms of those caricatures is the smile. Black people always had to look like they were happy to be serving White people, that they were happy to be enslaved. And what we see when more African American people are creating representations of their own culture is a sense of coolness, assuredness, of beauty, of calm, of reflection. A sense of an inner life that’s not about performing for White audiences.
LYNNE: Organizations offered financial support to artists of this time, like William Henry Johnson. In the early 1920s, the Harmon Foundation held annual exhibitions that were also competitions.
COOKS: The winner of the competition would receive money and the opportunity to travel to Paris, in particular, to do a kind of residency, as we think about it now. To spend time there going to museums and connecting with other expatriates, Black expatriates who are living in Europe, and to have a studio and really develop their craft.
LYNNE: These artists would’ve wandered through gardens, sat smoking in cafés. Many of them would’ve created new work in a place wholly new to them. They would’ve stood in front of paintings they’d only ever had the chance to see in books. Studying the brushstrokes of masters, admiring the lines and colors and feeling a connection with a place so rich in art history.
COOKS: We see a kind of exchange, I think, between creative people in Europe and here. I think what the exhibition at The Met is doing is to make those connections quite explicit so that we see that connection between European culture and African American culture really as an exchange, as a conversation instead of a kind of derivative or an imitative practice on the part of African Americans.
LYNNE: The Harlem Renaissance at its core represented a set of ideas—it was a mindset. And people carry and move with their ideas and outlooks. Whether they were in Paris or New York, Philadelphia or Chicago, Black people at the time were reshaping how the world saw them and how they would see themselves in the world.
COOKS: You know, these portraits were a way for people to really think about their identities as part of a larger community involved in the Harlem Renaissance, involved with the Great Migration. To sort of take a moment to pause and think about, how do I want to fashion myself? What do I want my image to be? What do people see when they look at me?
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LYNNE: The portraits and photographs created during this time reflected a new—and often fashionable—modern Black subject, but they didn’t necessarily reveal the struggle behind creating that very image. Jim Crow laws in the deep South and segregated neighborhoods in the North made even obtaining clothes a challenge at times.
GIVHAN: Black men and women couldn’t just go into any store. Some of them, you know, they were prohibited from going in. Or they might have been able to go in, but they couldn’t actually try on the clothes. They might be able to buy a hat in the store, but not try the hat on. So, there were these, kind of, social and psychological hurdles that I think were connected to just the idea of getting dressed.
LYNNE: Not every Black community in America was Harlem. Not every town or neighborhood had nightclubs and ballrooms or the excitement of New York, but almost every community had a church.
GIVHAN: There was no such thing as coming to church on a Sunday informally, like you were dolled up and you pulled out, you know, if you had a fur coat… sorry, PETA, you wore your fur coat! You know, hats were a huge thing. Just women in the heels and the dresses and the, you know, my dad in a Borsalino fedora and, you know, the cashmere overcoat. Like those were all, kind of, to me the hallmarks that came out of the Harlem Renaissance. But that just sort of spread far beyond that and continued to be essential to the way that that particular generation presented themselves.
LYNNE: Clothing choices are visual signifiers. People speculate about who we are from what we’re wearing based on their own experiences and sometimes biases.
GIVHAN: Fashion really captures the emotion of a moment. I don’t think that, you know, today we can look at a hoodie in the same way that we might have prior to the death of Trayvon Martin. A hoodie has so much weight to it now, depending on who’s wearing it and who gets to wear it, and where they got to go when they’re wearing that hoodie, and the presumptions that we make about people. So, when people talk about fashion as just clothing, they forget human nature. They forget the fact that every single one of us makes an assumption or a judgment based on attire. It’s why we think about, oh, what should I wear to a dear friend’s wedding? Because we want to show respect and enthusiasm and we want to feel like we’re part of the group. It’s why people wear black and gray and navy to funerals. I mean, all of these things are aspects of the way in which fashion is used as a tool of both communication and connection.
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LYNNE: We asked Robin and Bridget to look at some portraits from the Harlem Renaissance: a photograph and a painting. If you’re planning to attend the exhibition The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism at The Met between February and July in 2024 you’ll find these pieces on display.
If that’s not the case you can find them linked in the episode description.
Or, you can close your eyes and listen to what Bridget and Robin see when they look at these portraits, considering the lives of the artists, the subjects, and the worlds they lived in.
LYNNE: One of the most iconic photographs of the Harlem Renaissance is James Van Der Zee’s Couple, Harlem from 1932.
James Van Der Zee (American, 1886–1983). Couple, Harlem, 1932, printed later. Gelatin silver print, 8 in. x 10 in. (20.3 x 25.2 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, James Van Der Zee Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Gift of Donna Van Der Zee, 2021 (2021.446.1.2) © James Van Der Zee Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
COOKS: Everything about this photograph is impressive. From the background brownstones that we can see in the recess of the photograph to the cars in the photograph, particularly this very fancy Cadillac that takes up most of the picture. And we have this gorgeous couple. The man who’s in the car wearing this full-length raccoon coat, and the woman who’s standing elegantly. I mean, it may have been posed, but it may have just been a really opportunistic photograph of seeing these two people and being so inspired by the way that they look that James Van Der Zee stopped to take their picture.
Something else that is remarkable is the date. This is during the Great Depression. And yet we have this couple who are quite successful, are doing very well, are able to maintain respect and dignity in difficult times. The fact that they exist in this moment with such care of each other and a willingness to be seen and to represent Black people in Harlem is inspirational. You know, their story is inspirational. The photograph is inspirational. James Van Der Zee was inspired, and it’s a kind of miraculous photograph given the social context of the time.
LYNNE: Now, let’s move to a painting of the Bronzeville neighborhood in Chicago… Archibald J. Motley, Jr.’s Black Belt from 1934.
Archibald J. Motley, Jr. (American, 1891–1981). Black Belt, 1934. Oil on canvas, 33 x 40 1/2 in. Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia.
GIVHAN: It looks like… you know, in the evening in the party district. And people are… I think I can’t tell if they’re coming or going, but they’re definitely in the midst of having a great evening.
And the women. I love these images of the women in these sort of sleeveless dresses, what they call “fit and flare,” where they’re sort of fitted at the waist and they flare out around the hips. And the gentlemen are walking alongside them. Some of them have their arms wrapped around the waist. And, you know, there’s, I think… yeah, like a police officer who’s sort of directing traffic and taxis. You just… you feel like the energy of that evening and sort of the chaotic excitement of it. And, you know, there’s a guy in the center whose got like the sleeves rolled up and his hands are sort of jammed into his pockets and he just sort of looks like he looks a little, you know, hesitant. And like maybe he’s wondering if, I don’t know, maybe he’ll get lucky that evening. Who knows? [Laughs]
But I love that the title is Black Belt because it reminds me of those areas in cities like Detroit, sort of Black Bottom, and that were these entertainment districts that filled with Black entertainers and artists and other creative folks where people, you know, socialized in the evening. This one is just full of, like, so much life and excitement. Like, you just want to go to the party that they’re going to.
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LYNNE: A big thank you to Robin Givhan and Bridget Cooks for spending time with us today. Our next episode will focus on the arts and literature of the Harlem Renaissance. We’ll discuss magazines like The Crisis and Opportunity and the role they played in helping to spread the writings, illustrations, and ideas of the great minds of the Harlem Renaissance across America, and around the world.
Harlem Is Everywhere is produced by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in collaboration with Audacy’s Pineapple Street Studios.
Our senior producer is Stephen Key.
Our producer is Maria Robins-Somerville.
Our editor is Josh Gwynn.
Mixing by our senior engineer, Marina Paiz.
Additional engineering by senior audio engineer, Pedro Alvira.
Our assistant engineers are Sharon Bardales and Jade Brooks.
I’m your host, Jessica Lynne.
Fact checking by Maggie Duffy.
Legal services by Kristel Tupja.
Original music by Austin Fisher and Epidemic Sound.
The Met’s production staff includes producer, Rachel Smith; managing producer, Christopher Alessandrini; and executive producer, Sarah Wambold.
This show would not be possible without Denise Murrell, the Merryl H. & James S. Tisch Curator at Large and curator for The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism exhibition; and research associate is Tiarra Brown.
Special thanks to Inka Drögemüller, Douglas Hegley, Skyla Choi, Isabella Garces, David Raymond, Ashliy Sabb, Tess Solot-Kehl, Gretchen Scott, and Frank Mondragon.
Asha Saluja and Je-Anne Berry are the executive producers at Pineapple Street.
Support for this podcast is provided by Bloomberg Philanthropies.
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