catblogging van der zee

the other day i had a wow moment, when i came across one of Harlem Renaissance photographer James Van Der Zee's last portraits. i'd seen it before but never given serious thought to it. but it is hard to wrap my head around the fact that Van Der Zee took the top photograph during the Great Depression, and the bottom one, of Jean-Michel Basquiat, in 1982 at the age of 96. what an amazing life's work.

(there's an interesting article about this period in Van Der Zee's life here, in a 1981 issue of Ebony.)

and Basquiat's portrait of Van Der Zee (VNDRZ) is below.