Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964) was an American writer and photographer, as well as a champion of African-American artists and writers, and a notable patron and collector of works and ephemera pertaining to the Harlem Renaissance. Van Vechten took up photography in earnest in the early 1930s, at the age of 56, after working as a writer for decades – both for the New York Times, and independently as a novelist. He is now celebrated for his portrait photographs of friends, acquaintances, fledgling artists, and established cultural figures of the time; including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Langston Hughes, Manual Komroff, and Gertrude Stein.
