Haskins J. James Van Derzee: The Picture-Takin' Man

Dodd, Mead & Company, 1984. — 264 p.A biography of the black photographer who has received acclaim for his prints of Harlem.When the "Harlem on My Mind" show opened at the Metropolitan Museum in 1968, the photographs of James Van Der-Zce were a revelation, and not simply because they showed black people of comfort, beauty, and pride, whom few Americans knew anything about. The photographs marked the "discovery" of a new American master — a neighborhood photographer who had recorded more than a half century of black history. Moreover, he had made his photographs not to be famous or remembered, but simply to do the best work he could for the people who came to his studio.