Bowdoin College Museum of Art | - At Home, Josephine Becton (variant)

Preview image of work. vintage gelatin silver print, At Home, Josephine Becton (variant) 13398

2003.13.9

Recommend keywords

Help us make our collections more accessible by providing keywords to describe this artwork. The BCMA uses the Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus to provide consistent keywords. Enter a keyword in the field below and you will be prompted with a list of possible matching AAT preferred terms.

At Home, Josephine Becton (variant)

Export record as: Plain text | JSON | CDWA-Lite | VRA Core 4

Artist

James Augustus Joseph Van Der Zee (Lenox, Massachusetts, 6/29/1886 - 5/15/1983, Washington, DC)

Title

At Home, Josephine Becton (variant)

Creation Date

1934

Century

early 20th century

Dimensions

8 in. x 10 1/16 in. (20.32 cm x 25.56 cm)

Classification

Photographs

Creation Place

North America, United States

Medium and Support

vintage gelatin silver print

Credit Line

Museum Purchase, Lloyd O. and Marjorie Strong Coulter Fund

Copyright

This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s Copyright Terms and Conditions.

Accession Number

2003.13.9

James Van Der Zee made it his mission to capture the beauty of Black life in New York City. Whether documenting glamorous couples on the streets of Harlem or creating handsome portraits of citizens in his studio, he was committed to the visual documentation of the city. His photographs often reveal Black middle-class life, including this portrait of Josephine Becton in her lavish Harlem apartment. Seated at her piano with several large flower bouquets and a heart-shaped box of chocolates, Becton appears at home in her surroundings. She was widely known and well-respected in the African American community because of her husband, who was a famous minister and leader of the World Gospel Feast Party, Inc. This photograph was taken a year after his kidnapping and murder, but Josephine continued to carry on his religious legacy. Images of middle-class life countered views of impoverished African Americans that were prevalent in the work of photojournalists prior to and throughout this period.