Author Name:

Author Description <b>Carl van Vechten</b> (B.A., University of Chicago, 1903) was a photographer, music-dance critic, novelist, and patron of the Harlem Renaissance who served as literary executor for <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/9325.Gertrude_Stein" title="Gertrude Stein" rel="nofollow noopener">Gertrude Stein</a>.<br /><br />Van Vechten was among the most influential literary figures of the 1910s and 1920s. He began his career in journalism as a reporter, then in 1906 joined <i>The New York Times</i> as assistant music critic and later worked as its Paris correspondent. His early reviews are collected in <i> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10466266.Interpreters_and_Interpretations" title="Interpreters and Interpretations" rel="nofollow noopener">Interpreters and Interpretations</a> </i> (1917 and 1920) and <i> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43080026.Excavations__A_Book_of_Advocacies" title="Excavations: A Book of Advocacies" rel="nofollow noopener">Excavations: A Book of Advocacies</a> </i> (1926). His first novel, <i> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27267020.Peter_Whiffle" title="Peter Whiffle" rel="nofollow noopener">Peter Whiffle</a> </i> (1922), a first-person account of the salon and bohemian culture of New York and Paris and clearly drawn from Van Vechten's own experiences, and was immensely popular. His most controversial work of fiction is <i> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8350147.Nigger_Heaven" title="Nigger Heaven" rel="nofollow noopener">Nigger Heaven</a> </i> (1926), notable for its depiction of black life in Harlem in the 1920s and its sympathetic treatment of the newly emerging black culture.<br /><br />In the 1930s, Van Vechten turned from fiction to photography. His photographs are in collections at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and elsewhere. An important literary patron, he established the James Weldon Johnson Collection of Negro Arts and Letters at Yale.

Current Image: Filenames must be full path to file or a URL, or put none to remove author image
Filename and URL need to end with .jpg/.jpeg/.png/.webp

Find Images