You could tell that he was getting back to work when the drinking stopped and the parties stopped. Sitting in uneasy silence—he hated being alone, but, spiritually, he was always alone—he’d put a pad ...

James Van Der Zee’s baroque, carefully composed funeral home photos illuminate century-old ideals of mourning and ritual in Black culture. By Walker Mimms When you purchase an independently reviewed ...

“You’re here today and gone sometimes today,” Van Der Zee told the sculptor Camille Billops, who gathered the photographs into a collection and edited this book before it was first published in 1978.

The dead don’t care about their appearance, but James Van Der Zee presented them as beautiful. Commissioned to take photographs by grieving loved ones, Van Der Zee (1886-1983) would compose images of ...