Creative Americans: Portraits by Carl Van Vechten 1932-1964

February 17, 2006 12:39 PM

Creative Americans: The Carl Van Vechten Photographs Collection at the Library of Congress consists of 1,395 photographs taken by American photographer Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964) between 1932 and 1964. The bulk of the collection consists of portrait photographs of celebrities, including many figures from the Harlem Renaissance. Portraits include those of Tallulah Bankhead, Salvador Dali, Truman Capote, Dizzy Gillespie, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Eartha Kitt, and Joe Louis. They are all available in medium or high resolution JPEG’s or uncompressed archival TIFF versions.
posted by ND¢ (10 comments total)

Part of the previously mentioned Library of Congress’s American Memory Project.
posted by ND¢ at 12:41 PM on February 17, 2006

Van Vechten was a tremendous polymath and eccentric. He did a lot of great things, but I hesitate to call him a genius. More like an ennabler of great things like the Harlem Renaissance, and progressive to the point of absurdity, if not offensiveness ("Nigger Heaven") when it came to race.

I knew he was a photographer, but it's nice to actually see his photos. Very cool stuff NDcent.
posted by bardic at 12:45 PM on February 17, 2006

Is it me or does Dali look like Gomez Addams?
posted by Smedleyman at 1:28 PM on February 17, 2006

Thanks, ND¢. I hadn't thought about Van Vechten since I helped make a fake Van Vechten print for the cover of a book I worked on in grad school.
posted by MrMoonPie at 2:00 PM on February 17, 2006

I should have researched this post more. Here is an incredible site: Extravagant Crowd: Carl Van Vechten’s Portraits of Women
posted by ND¢ at 2:20 PM on February 17, 2006

posted by ND¢ at 2:39 PM on February 17, 2006

posted by ND¢ at 2:41 PM on February 17, 2006

Very cool. Love the TIFs. Thanks!
posted by squirrel at 3:11 PM on February 17, 2006

Wow ND¢! Carol Channing without wrinkles, and a Lena Horne that I failed to recognize. Interesting.
posted by Cranberry at 5:33 PM on February 17, 2006

Zora is teh hawt.
posted by bardic at 10:58 AM on February 18, 2006