Details
Carmen De Lavallade, famed African American dancer, actress and choreographer was born in Los Angeles in 1931 to a Creole family from New Orleans that included Janet Collins, De Lavallade’s cousin, and the first Black Prima Ballerina of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Destined for dance herself, Carmen began studying ballet at 16. By 1954, she had reached New York and was dancing with the Alvin Ailey Company following a stint as the lead dancer for the Lester Horton Dance Theater in Los Angeles beginning in 1949. Also in 1954, she made her broadway debut alongside Alvin Ailey and Pearl Bailey in House of Flowers, a musical written by Truman Capote. Her substantial Broadway career would be augmented by several film and television appearances including Duke Ellington’s, A Drum is a Woman, in 1957 and Otto Preminger’s, Carmen Jones with Pearl Bailey and Dorothy Dandridge in 1954. In the years that followed, she traveled the world, frequently with her husband and longtime collaborator, Geoffrey Holder, dancing, acting and teaching. In 1970, De Lavallade joined the Yale School of Drama as a performer-in-residence and choreographer, and later became a professor of the Yale Repertory Theater, which at the time counted Sigourney Weaver and Meryl Streep among its students. The recipient of many awards over her long and illustrious career, Carmen De Lavallade was awarded at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2017. This photo, taken at the start of her career in 1955 by noted American photographer Carl Van Vechten, is reproduced here in an archival museum quality print. Presented on 100% acid free, 5.57 oz, smooth matte fine art paper, this piece is sustainably printed to order in the UK, making it the perfect choice for a beautiful statement in any room.
Editors' Note
Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964) was an iconic photographer, controversial author, and acclaimed patron of Black artists, authors and intellectuals in the 1920s. Though not a member of the African American community, he was a close friend of many of its leading figures, including, notably, Zora Neale Hurston. A mainstay of the social scene of the Harlem Renaissance, he was instrumental in furthering the careers of many such as Hurston, Langston Hughes and Paul Robeson. As a photographer, Van Vechten’s work provides an invaluable record as he photographed many stars of the Renaissance period and beyond at pivotal moments in their careers — including his 1946 portrait of W.E.B. Du Bois and 1955 image of James Baldwin — at a time when sophisticated, dignified portraiture for such figures was in short supply. At the same time, however, Van Vechten’s legacy is marred by his sense of ownership over the Black creatives with whom he socialized and collaborated, and his willingness to demean them, whether through his use of racial slurs in the naming of his Harlem-based novel, or his tendency to exoticize Black subjects through dress and pose, presenting them in ways more reflective of racial archetypes than the subject’s true nature. While Van Vechten’s work, like his friendship, has proven invaluable to the careers and legacies of many luminaries of African American culture across generations, it is also demonstrative of the complex, often fraught relationship between Black creatives, intellectuals and activists, and those who purport to be “allies.” Nevertheless, Van Vechten’s images are part of major catalogues at the Schomburg Center For Research in Black Culture in New York City, and at Howard University in Washington DC. The AphroChic collection of Van Vechten’s work reproduces and colorizes some of the photographer’s most compelling portraits of Black luminaries, presenting an intersection of themes that promises to lend untold layers of meaning to each image, making them ever more striking additions to the aesthetic of any room.
Details
Carmen De Lavallade, famed African American dancer, actress and choreographer was born in Los Angeles in 1931 to a Creole family from New Orleans that included Janet Collins, De Lavallade’s cousin, and the first Black Prima Ballerina of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Destined for dance herself, Carmen began studying ballet at 16. By 1954, she had reached New York and was dancing with the Alvin Ailey Company following a stint as the lead dancer for the Lester Horton Dance Theater in Los Angeles beginning in 1949. Also in 1954, she made her broadway debut alongside Alvin Ailey and Pearl Bailey in House of Flowers, a musical written by Truman Capote. Her substantial Broadway career would be augmented by several film and television appearances including Duke Ellington’s, A Drum is a Woman, in 1957 and Otto Preminger’s, Carmen Jones with Pearl Bailey and Dorothy Dandridge in 1954. In the years that followed, she traveled the world, frequently with her husband and longtime collaborator, Geoffrey Holder, dancing, acting and teaching. In 1970, De Lavallade joined the Yale School of Drama as a performer-in-residence and choreographer, and later became a professor of the Yale Repertory Theater, which at the time counted Sigourney Weaver and Meryl Streep among its students. The recipient of many awards over her long and illustrious career, Carmen De Lavallade was awarded at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2017. This photo, taken at the start of her career in 1955 by noted American photographer Carl Van Vechten, is reproduced here in an archival museum quality print. Presented on 100% acid free, 5.57 oz, smooth matte fine art paper, this piece is sustainably printed to order in the UK, making it the perfect choice for a beautiful statement in any room.
Editors' Note
Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964) was an iconic photographer, controversial author, and acclaimed patron of Black artists, authors and intellectuals in the 1920s. Though not a member of the African American community, he was a close friend of many of its leading figures, including, notably, Zora Neale Hurston. A mainstay of the social scene of the Harlem Renaissance, he was instrumental in furthering the careers of many such as Hurston, Langston Hughes and Paul Robeson. As a photographer, Van Vechten’s work provides an invaluable record as he photographed many stars of the Renaissance period and beyond at pivotal moments in their careers — including his 1946 portrait of W.E.B. Du Bois and 1955 image of James Baldwin — at a time when sophisticated, dignified portraiture for such figures was in short supply. At the same time, however, Van Vechten’s legacy is marred by his sense of ownership over the Black creatives with whom he socialized and collaborated, and his willingness to demean them, whether through his use of racial slurs in the naming of his Harlem-based novel, or his tendency to exoticize Black subjects through dress and pose, presenting them in ways more reflective of racial archetypes than the subject’s true nature. While Van Vechten’s work, like his friendship, has proven invaluable to the careers and legacies of many luminaries of African American culture across generations, it is also demonstrative of the complex, often fraught relationship between Black creatives, intellectuals and activists, and those who purport to be “allies.” Nevertheless, Van Vechten’s images are part of major catalogues at the Schomburg Center For Research in Black Culture in New York City, and at Howard University in Washington DC. The AphroChic collection of Van Vechten’s work reproduces and colorizes some of the photographer’s most compelling portraits of Black luminaries, presenting an intersection of themes that promises to lend untold layers of meaning to each image, making them ever more striking additions to the aesthetic of any room.
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