Van Der Zee's life. "I tried to see that every picture was better-looking than the person ... I had one woman come to me and say 'Mr. VanDerZee my friends tell that's a nice picture, but it doesn't look like you.' That was my style", said VanDerZee. Van Der Zee sometimes combined several photos in one image, for example by adding a ghostly child to an image of a wedding to suggest the couple's future, or by superimposing a funeral image upon a photograph of a dead woman to give the feeling of her eerie presence. Van Der Zee said, "I wanted to make the camera take what I thought should be there." Van Der Zee was a working photographer who supported himself through portraiture, and he devoted time to his professional work before his more artistic compositions. Many famous residents of Harlem were among his subjects. In addition to portraits, Van Der Zee photographed organizations, events, and other businesses. Exhibitions Solo exhibitions 1970: Lenox Library, Massachusetts 1971: Studio Museum in Harlem, New York 1974: Lunn Gallery/Graphics International, Washington, D.C. 1979: The Legacy of James Van Der Zee: A Portrait of Black Americans, Alternative Center for International Arts, New York and Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington 1983: Camera Club of New York and Idaho State University, Pocatello 1987: Deborah Sharp Gallery, New York 1994: Retrospective, National Portrait Gallery Washington, D.C. and Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York Selected group exhibitions 1969: Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America 1900–1968, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1978: Lunn Gallery, Washington, D.C. 1979: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Fleeting Gestures: Dance Photographs, International Center of Photography, New York (traveling) 1982: Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn, Germany 1985: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 1987: Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (traveling) Publications Further reading Colin Westerbeck: The James VanDerZee Studios with an Essay by Dawoud Bey. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago 2004, . References External links Van Der Zee at Biography.com Drop Me Off in Harlem James Van Der Zee in the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN 1886 births 1983 deaths Photographers from New York City African-American photographers People from Lenox, Massachusetts Harlem Renaissance American portrait photographers 20th-century American photographers 20th-century American male artists Photographers from Massachusetts 20th-century African-American artists African-American Catholics