#carl van vechten
Continuing the celebration of the photographer’s birthday today, a selection of Carl Van Vechten’s brilliant color portraits of African American performers: Billie Holiday, Geoffrey Holder, Pearl Bailey, Carmen De Lavallade, Ella Fitzgerald, Joyce Bryant, Harry Belafonte, Ethel Waters, James Earl Jones, and Blanche Dunn.
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Happy birthday to Man Ray, who produced works in a variety of artistic styles, including the production of photograms (which he called rayograms)—photographs created without the use of a camera by placing objects on light-sensitive material and then exposing the material to light.
“Man Ray,” 1934, by Carl Van Vechten
Always extraordinary.
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I have been inspired by many photographers, Mapplethrope, Ritts, Sleet, Parks, Arbus, Lange and Van Vechten.
Van Vechten was particularly proud of the range of his photographs of blacks. One of the unique features of the collection is a set of photographs of Negroes (already there are eleven boxes with an average of forty photographs in a box) which I have made myself during the past ten years,” Van Vechten told readers of the Crisis in 1942, “perhaps the largest group of photographs of notable Negro personalities ever made by one man.” ~ Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance: A Portrait in Black and White.
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Henri Matisse, 1933, by Carl Van Vechten
Happy birthday to the inimitable Henri Matisse. In this portrait by American photographer Carl Van Vechten, Matisse looks very dapper indeed.
“Henri Matisse,” 1933, by Carl Van Vechten
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“Max Ewing’s Closet and Queer Architectural History” by Alice T. Friedman. Fascinating short two-part article on a pre-Stonewall “tumblr page” of sorts, examining the closet as architecture and metaphor, a collection of images both personal and historical, and the life of an important early 20th century gay figure in New York. Links here: https://www.platformspace.net/home?author=5d9e07b47c0a913245a9ecba
Continuing the celebration of the photographer’s birthday today, a selection of Carl Van Vechten’s brilliant color portraits of African American performers: Billie Holiday, Geoffrey Holder, Pearl Bailey, Carmen De Lavallade, Ella Fitzgerald, Joyce Bryant, Harry Belafonte, Ethel Waters, James Earl Jones, and Blanche Dunn.
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Happy 96th (!!!) Birthday to my beautiful opera singer aunt, Margaret Tynes! She was born in Saluda, Virginia on September 11, 1919 just as race riots broke out in cities all over the United States - the “Red Summer of 1919”. She was the eighth of ten children born to Rev. Joseph W. Tynes and his wife, educator Lucy Rich Tynes. Rev. Tynes held a divinity degree from Virginia Union University at a time when most Black men were lucky to have a high school education and subsequently served as vice-president of Virginia Theological Seminary and College. He was also an an accomplished poet. Aunt Margaret had a phenomenal international career as a singer in opera, jazz and theater for over fifty years. A graduate of North Carolina A&T State University (BA 1939) and Columbia University (MA 1944), she is a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. She starred as Harry Belafonte’s leading lady off-Broadway in a show he produced called “Sing Man, Sing!” She also recorded a jazz suite called “A Drum is a Woman” with Duke Ellington and made several appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. In 1961, she gained international acclaim as Salomé at the Spoleto Festival of the Two Worlds in Italy, where she lived for more than forty years. This picture was taken by the invaluable Carl Van Vechten on September 29, 1959. Photo: Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library
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