The Black Forties, Van Vechten Style
So I was tooling around looking for images to illustrate an article about Harlem, when I came upon a cache of stunning color photos, a few of which are shown here. These were all shot in New York City in 1940 and 1941: A socialite poses in an oversized hat. Youths hang out at a municipal pool in Harlem. As for the little boy, whose name is Julius Perkins, Jr., and about whom I can't find one bit of information (except that there is also a photo of him with, of all people, Tallulah Bankhead), he wears that scarf with such twenty-first century attitude that it's almost scary. Maybe Tallulah taught him how. You may recognize the photographer's style, but if you don't, the lensman was Carl Van Vechten , a white man whose portfolio of black people—particularly celebrities, literati, entertainers, famous folks and the like—is huge, and about whom I will be writing again. There is much to say about the strange man, not the least of which is that he wrote a book called Nigger ...