VAN VECHTEN, Carl (1880-1964), photographer. The lake front, Lake Shore Drive, Chicago. Nov. 1934.

7 3/4 x 9 1/8 in. silver gelatin photograph. Recto, lower right with Carl Van Vechten's embossed blindstamp. Verso with Van Vechten's studio stamp, as well as the caption, "Chicago, lake front from the Drake." This image was almost certainly taken around the same time that Van Vechten photographed Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein when they visited Chicago and stayed at the Drake Hotel in late November and early December 1934. While there, Stein gave a lecture at the Friday Club, a women’s literary society, and they took the opportunity to see the Chicago premiere of Four Saints in Three Acts, for which Stein had written the libretto.

Carl Van Vechten was well-connected to the people and places of the Harlem Renaissance at a time when racial segregation and Jim Crow laws were intense. Throughout the 1920s, he indulged in the parties and social scene of New York's Black creative class, which he captured in his provocatively titled novel Nigger Heaven. When the Depression came, he stopped writing novels and began taking photographs, most notably of influential African Americans, taking iconic portraits of thought leaders, entertainment stars, sports figures, artists, writers of the Harlem Renaissance, and more. His collection of over 9000 images, mostly portraits, is held at the Beinecke Library at Yale University.

Property of Kris and Alicia Huffman, SuddElle Farms at Clover Hill, Lenoir, North Carolina

VAN VECHTEN, Carl (1880-1964), photographer. The lake front, Lake Shore Drive, Chicago. Nov. 1934.