Lens crafter

THE EXPRESSION, "LIFE IMITATES ART," is meant to italicize the irony that so often describes our lives. In VanDerZee: Photographer, 1886 - 1983, by Deborah Willis-Braithwaite and Roger C. Birt, we see how the life and/or art of a great African American photographer was a reel run in slow-motion: at once modern and genteel. Also, without irony.

Looking at VanDerZee's evocative photographs -- a magical quality is draped over his famed portraits and commercial work alike -- is like peeking into someone's dream of comfortable, proud black lives. The shots of UNIA assemblies -- really protest rallies -- assume the magnitude of a silent film epic.

Even the near-fiasco that ensued at the 1969 "Harlem On My Mind" exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York -- when black artists, on one hand, and the Jewish Defense League, on the other, protested against the show's format or the content of the catalogue -- left VanDerZee's contribution unscathed. Willis-Braithwaite and Birt bring a trained eye and revealing biographical text to a table resplendent with the gifts of VanDerZee's life.

by Deborah Willis-Braithwaite and Roger C. Birt, Harry N. Abrams, September 1998, 192 pp., $19.95, ISBN 0-8109-2782-9.

Photograph (Joe Louis)