Ripples in the Historiography: Harlem Studio Photographer James Van Der Zee and Cecil Beaton’s New York, 1938

Abstract In 1938, the well-known British photographer Cecil Beaton published his travelogue Cecil Beaton’s New York for American and British audiences. The book was the first to publish and consider works by the African American studio photographer James Van Der Zee. Yet this account of Van Der Zee has been overlooked by scholars and relegated to footnotes, feasibly because of Beaton’s dismissive and tactless consideration of the now highly regarded photographer. With commitments to exploring the overlooked and unexpected moments in Van Der Zee’s historiography, this essay approaches Cecil Beaton’s New York as an opportunity to begin thinking about Van Der Zee in ways that transgress established narratives. It does so by inserting Van Der Zee within an avant-garde circle in which he is rarely considered, and attending to the possibility of an early-twentieth century-critical Black readership of Beaton’s book. With the aim of centring Van Der Zee, this essay demonstrates his relevance to a multitude of interwar contexts animated by the practice of photography. As a result, it becomes conceivable to shift the very terms through which we interpret the early account of Van Der Zee’s work, and the transatlantic contexts that scholars may choose to consider.