Some people buy jewelry or pay down student debt with a book advance. Though I love Cartier as much as the next guy and Biden had yet to forgive my loans when I got my check, I bought a photograph instead. Or rather, I was the successful bidder at one of the always-anticipated sales held by Swann, the Manhattan firm whose 1952 auction was the first in America dedicated to the mysterious medium. The lot I badly wanted was a dark, evocative, and unidentified interior of a Harlem brownstone signed and dated in 1931, by James Van Der Zee. I had a feeling the photograph would help me write my next book.

For years in my introductory college survey, Toward a Rigorous Art History, I’ve shown images by this modernist photographer who should be a household name. I’ve read the reductive and bigoted take on his work in Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida and assigned crucial later correctives by art historians Deborah Willis and Margaret Olin, among others. I’ve relished thoughtful seminar discussions about Van Der Zee’s open-casket funeral montages vis-à-vis American spiritualism, Black Lives Matter, and Gothic architecture. I remind students that Van Der Zee—whose pictures were enlisted for graphic murals and reportage—wasn’t acknowledged as a fine artist in the Met’s notorious Harlem on My Mind exhibition of 1969.

I came to think of the photograph as a sort of talisman for my in-progress novel.

All these years later, Van Der Zee—born in 1886 in Lenox, MA not far from the site of Edith Wharton’s Beaux Arts villa, The Mount—is still routinely pigeonholed as solely a portraitist or documentarian of Black life. And it’s true, from the Jazz Age through the second World War and beyond, nobody portrayed his myriad sitters more resourcefully and attentively than Van Der Zee. Whether or not, as Rembrandt often had, the artist upgraded your outfit with something from the studio trunk, you always looked sumptuously stylish and classily uptown in a Van Der Zee shot. Much of what we know about the look of living in Harlem in the first half of the last century we owe to Van Der Zee. A man about town, he was as likely to pose a person before a painted backdrop as he was to take a group portrait on someone’s stoop or capture a regimented procession on the avenue.

A good photograph, like a good novel, represents a series of artistic choices. In art, nothing has to be where it is. Our arguments about whether a made-up story set in a given historical period or place can be excused for being all, or nearly all, white and/or male are moot. Any story can be told in such a way as to represent the underrepresented. Sometimes that choice is the newest and boldest, the most modern. It’s therefore important to approach James Van Der Zee as one would approach other innovative artists of the period. Man Ray, Hannah Hoch, Claude Cahun, and Edward Weston were all Van Der Zee’s near contemporaries. Van Der Zee was not only technically virtuosic, he was idiosyncratic and experimental. Abstraction isn’t the only way to be avantgarde. Van Der Zee is an artist whose medium happened to be black and white photography and whose subject matter of choice was primarily Black people of almost every imaginable occupation and disposition and age and gender and class and hue.

Where photography is concerned, I am a fan of the weird digression, the one-off. The Van Der Zee for me was therefore a quietly elegant image containing no sitter at all. Much as I love the flirtatious young women in all their plumed twenties glory and the families with their flowers and cats, the teams and the clubs and even the funerals and the occasional naughty fireside nude, I wanted none of that. I couldn’t imagine living with people with whom I had no connection—other, of course, than our shared designation as Black under the traditional understanding of race and blood quanta in this country.

As far as I know, nobody has discovered whose living room Van Der Zee fixed for posterity in this gelatin silver print he made the same year the Empire State building opened its doors (the Studio Museum in Harlem owns a Van Der Zee image of this living room, dated the same year and cropped slightly differently). What I like about my photograph are all the subtle indications that it, too, is a kind of self-representation and identity-construction. That the designer of this interior’s personal style is proudly on view just as quirky, individual personalities come across in the artist’s canny human portraits.

Image courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries.
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Image courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries.

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So, I bid on the photograph and after things got a little hotter than I’d hoped, I bit the bullet, and won. I’m a gambler by nature. Like the stock market, and casinos, and buying steak on sale, auctions are for people who enjoy risk. Although I claimed the image of a Harlem interior for myself, I offered it to the universe as an ex voto for rewarding me for taking some of the bigger professional risks of my adult life: deciding to try my hand at fiction when I’d just turned fifty. Deciding to concoct a steamy lesbian romance when my own relationship was on the rocks. Deciding to write about the queerness of inhabiting a racialized and gendered space between and amidst Black and white, a space American culture often seems not to want to understand or greet in good faith. And to give all of that a happy, if fictional, ending.

Life can be stilled in a photograph. Van Der Zee’s portraits from the 20s and 30s effectively pressed pause on someone’s existence. Those sitters will forever be the way they are in that particular moment, yet, paradoxically, they will never be that way again. An unpopulated image such as my Harlem interior has neither an ending nor a beginning. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t tell—or inspire me to tell—a story. By and by I came to think of the photograph as a sort of talisman for my in-progress novel.

An old photograph got my mind going in unforeseen directions.

Before I hung it on my wall, I was maybe a third of the way into a story that I knew would be anchored by a romantic relationship in the present between two ambitious young women, one Black and one white. Both becoming increasingly aware that the seemingly small everyday decisions they were making about work had started to affect their personal lives and the trajectory of their professional success, in important ways.

I wanted an inherited Harlem brownstone and all that came with it to serve as both setting and catalyst for the romance between Glory and Parkie. But I’m from Denver. I’d never lived in that kind of house and the photo was taken almost a century ago. So, in the beginning, I sat down each morning with the framed photograph close by, basically using it as a primary source—a literal example of late nineteenth-century architecture possibly inhabited in the early teens and updated in stages but never entirely redone. I wrote, then stared, then wrote. I started out close-looking for describable details—the living room has a period “Chinoiserie” vibe, note the Buddha lamp, lacquered fireplace screen, and porcelain figurines on the mantel—but soon realized all that materiality was getting me in a usefully imaginative mood where backstory and secondary characters were concerned.

I was writing a romance not a historical novel—I wanted there to be a sex scene on the sofa. But looking back, I think a story about the contemporary art and auction world came to invoke the Harlem Renaissance as a result of thinking and writing through this single, historical, artifact that is also a work of art. An old photograph got my mind going in unforeseen directions that had nothing to do, initially, with my characters or plot as I’d envisioned them. I do research by day, so at times it was impossible not to follow the breadcrumbs I found in the image until my curiosity was satisfied. Where was Van Der Zee’s studio? Next door to the 135^th St. Public Library Branch that is today the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Could someone have read a Nella Larsen book in this room? Yes, Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929) had both been recently published when the photo was taken.

As far as that goes, Van Der Zee’s vacant interior felt appealingly haunted. Which encouraged me to search for, and create, the spirits who were likely responsible. Unlike his more recognizable prints, the brownstone image isn’t superimposed with lithographs of angels or saints or discomfiting doppelganger negatives of the recently deceased themselves. Neither, because photographs ghost everyone, are we faced with people who are more than likely no longer with us. By contrast, our picture is a room made visible by the invisible presence of the artist. Or is it his visible absence? When my novel begins, Glory isn’t much of a romantic and she doesn’t believe in ghosts. “But she did respect the mysterious power of places and things to retain vestiges of the people who possessed them, to radiate the almost palpable charge of their previous owners’ feelings.” A good photograph can do this too.

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Lush Lives by J. Vanessa Lyon is available from Roxane Gay Books, an imprint of Grove Atlantic.

With this in mind, Terry was keen on creating a sports-centred series in which the physical activity of the sport was not the focus. Instead, the spotlight was given to the people and Terry created “a visual language that reflects the environment’s graphic lines and composition, with pops of primary colours”, guiding the viewer into the world of indoor bowls.

Throughout the shoot Terry met a lot of “great personalities”, including Malcolm, who features in one of his favourite images from the series. Stylistically, the photographer wanted to emulate Lance Oppenheim’s Some Kind of Heaven, a dreamlike 2020 documentary that focuses on the community in the largest retirement village in Florida, US. Terry’s portrait has a very satisfying symmetry, with lockers and ceiling tiles framing the shot. But the real start of the show is Malcolm; slap bang in the middle of the image, he smiles as he holds a bowl, dressed in a simple yet stylish blue sweatshirt, white trousers and fresh white trainers.

While bowls is about coming together, having a few drinks and socialising, Terry confirms that it’s still very competitive. In Judging on Rink 1, players group around a ball, all closely inspecting the game; you can almost see the simmering tension of a disagreement occurring. The composition reminds Terry of a religious photo, with a figure pointing a finger and the bright white light from above almost appearing like a halo. But then you see the breeze block brick walls, felt chairs and fire exit, firmly reminding you that no, you’re not looking at Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, but a bowls club in Kent.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, August 2nd.

You’re listening to WORLD Radio and we thank you for that!

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a surprising friendship.

In 1982, President Ronald Reagan declared August 14th as National Navajo Code Talkers Day. It’s to recognize tribes for their contributions during World War II.

That was about the same time a young Japanese photographer took on an unlikely project.

REICHARD: That’s right, he photographed Japan’s former enemies. And healed some wounds in the process. WORLD Senior Writer Kim Henderson brings us this report.

KIM HENDERSON, SENIOR WRITER: Kenji Kawano has been photographing the Navajo for decades. In 1987, he started making portraits of the aging Navajo code talkers.

The code talkers are famous for using their native language to provide an unbreakable code for the military during World War 2. They were U. S. Marines, and they were very successful in the Pacific Theater.

Still, photographing the Navajo code talkers was an unusual project for Kawano.

KAWANO: Back in World War Two, they did something magnificent for this country. And I just happen to be Japanese, former enemy, my father went to World War Two. But I respect all these Navajo soldiers.

It’s late afternoon at the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, Arizona. Kawano, a white haired 74-year-old, is in his element. He’s talking about his code talker photos—nearly a hundred of them—hanging in an exhibit hall. They’re striking black-and-white portraits.

Kawano points to one.

KAWANO: He lives in Farmington, New Mexico. After discharge, he became a teacher, and he became a high school principal. So they told me about a story during World War Two. And those stories are my treasure.

In the portraits, each code talker is shown in a personal setting. Sometimes he’s on his couch holding war memorabilia. In some he’s in the desert wearing a uniform. One is standing in front of a church.

KAWANO: Chaplain? KH[: Chaplain?] Yeah, he was a chaplain. . . .

Kawano remembers it was very windy that day. He got the code talker to stand in front of a waving flag.

KAWANO: It’s a nice composition. So I took lots of pictures, and he didn’t mind that.

Getting the photos wasn’t always easy, though. The Navajo Nation is the size of West Virginia, and the code talkers were spread out. Some lived in remote areas. One home Kawano visited was an hour away from any paved road.

KAWANO: At this time, only 20 percent of Navajo people had the phone. So I couldn’t make appointments on the phone like people who live in a city. So I had to drive 2 to 3 hours…

One day, a reporter called from the state’s largest paper, the Arizona Republic.

KAWANO: They find out I’m taking pictures of code talkers, and the photographer is a Japanese. So they did a story in the paper. Then same day, I received publisher.

Kawano needed a publisher for a book he made of his Navajo code talker photos. It published in 1990. It’s had more than 20 printings. He says the code talkers enjoyed going to book signings.

KAWANO: And they love to sign their book. And people ask, “Where is your picture?” “Oh, my picture is page 20 or 30.” And signing. That makes me so happy.

Besides the book, Kawano’s photo exhibit has traveled to 50 sites in the United States, and it’s been to Japan three times.

When Kawano arrived in the United States in 1973, he planned to stay three months. That was 50 years ago. He ended up marrying a Navajo woman—Bazhniba.

She helped with his project.

BAZHNIBA: After he did the interviews, I did all the text. I translated them from Navajo to English.

The couple built strong relationships with the code talkers. Sadly, most of them are gone now. The families often asked Kawano to come to the funerals.

KAWANO: So I go. Then once I found near casket they have a table, and the picture I took picture them, like this, on display. I like to see a picture of their house on the wall. Or I come museum. But in a funeral—it was hard moment.

He learned to think of it another way.

KAWANO: They really like how I took the picture to remember their father or grandpa. So it is an honor for me, you know. They love my picture.

Bazhniba misses the big reunions and parades. She misses the code talkers.

BAZHNIBA: It’s quite shocking now—we only have three left. These men who have contributed so much to not only the Navajo land, but to the United States as a whole.

Kawano says some of the men became like fathers to him. In 1991, Kawano’s real dad flew from Japan to the reservation for a visit. Kawano introduced him to Code Talker Carl Gorman.

KAWANO: He met with Mr. Gorman in Wind Rock. Then Mr. Gorman told me, “Kenji, yes, we had the war with Japan. But the war is between governments, not person to person. So I don’t think of you as an enemy…”

Movies have been made about the Navajo code talkers. Other books have been written. But Kawano’s photos do something more. They mesmerize.

KAWANO: Many Americans get to know about the code talkers. I’m very happy. That is my goal.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kim Henderson in Window Rock, Arizona.

BROWN: To read Kim’s print story on the Navajo code talkers, look for the August 12th issue of WORLD Magazine…or just click on the link in today’s transcript. 

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.

I’ve been lucky enough to photograph plenty of interesting locations around the world – the Swiss Alps, Nevada, Japan, Poland, and the Australian desert, and I’ve also captured a ton of urban landscapes in my time.

But what struck me the most about photographing Southwest Tasmania with the team from On Board is that it felt like nowhere else I’d ever been.

I experienced a place with a sense of untouched solitude – peppered by grand landscapes that leave you feeling dwarfed in wild wilderness. Rocky coastlines, rolling button grass hills, and crystalline quartzite ridges are a reminder that this is a place that few get to experience, let alone photograph.

It’s a giant unforgiving landscape that genuinely reminds you that you are in the middle of nowhere – and this is all part of its unique charm.

The journey

In preparation for this photography-optimised trip, I had been watching the SBS TV series Alone, where survivalists are dropped into the wilds of Tasmania and then tasked with seeing who can last the longest living off the land.

It was probably no surprise then that on the one-hour plane ride from Hobart to Port Davey my imagination soon spun out the scenario where the plane crashed, and I had to somehow eke my way back to civilisation.

Luckily, there was plenty to distract. Our transport was a vintage De Havilland DHC-2 Beaver, a slow-moving plane that makes you feel like you’re in a vintage car sailing through the air.

Beneath us, the remote and wild Eastern Arthur Range, made famous by celebrated Tasmanian landscape photographer Peter Dombrovskis, peaked in and out of the clouds, revealing a rare view of Hanging Lake near Federation Peak.

Before I knew it, we’d dipped down, performed a silky-smooth landing, and were picked up in a small tinny by the owner and captain of our vessel, the beautiful and palatial Odalisque III.

The Captain, Pieter van der Woude, is a fascinating, sturdy character whose previous careers included policeman, search and rescue, and an abalone diver, before his love of nature and the area inspired him to offer these magical trips.

Our trip over the next four days would take us around the remote Port Davey region, exploring this stunning environment that’s all but inaccessible.

The surrounds

Tasmania’s Southwest is beautiful, pristine, rugged, and remote. And, as it is only accessible by a long boat ride, small plane, or four-to-five-day hike – it’s also rare to see another soul outside your immediate party. In fact, if you are completely silent you could just about hear a pin drop – you really are on your own.

The craggy cliffs, wild ocean, waves, and untouched wilderness provide a stunning backdrop for photography.

This remarkable trip is only offered once-a-season in April and we were blessed with largely clear weather and 15–20-degree days – perfect for short hikes, and yet cold enough at night at around 10 degrees to feel cosy and snug when you got back on board in the evening.

I’m no camping fan, and so was relieved that staying on board the Odalisque III was more akin to wilderness glamping than anything involving a tent, sleeping bags and uncomfortable camp stretchers.

With your own bedroom which includes a very civilised bathroom and a hot shower, it’s fair to say you won’t be roughing it, and the experience is all very boutique – apart from just six double rooms onboard, there is also a dining area and lounge room for socialising.

The days onboard followed a similar pattern. We’d start each day with a morning shoot to capture the early light or daybreak; followed by a hot delicious breakfast at 7:30am.

Then, we’d set off on a mid-morning to lunch adventure – which may or may not include lunch, either on location or back on the boat.

This would lead into a mid to late afternoon adventure which might see you doing a small hike up a hill, walking along a beach, exploring a rainforest, or taking a tinny to discover little coves and islets or abandoned settlements.

At the end of each day, we’d go through images on an iMac before or after a sumptuous dinner, and on the final evening we did a group slideshow of images on a large TV monitor.

Sights for sore eyes

The Southwest is famous for its unique flora of both national and international significance. Six broad ecosystem groups can be found here, and you’ll likely explore them all: rainforest; sclerophyll communities (think forests, woodlands, and scrub); alpine and subalpine areas; button grass moorland; and finally coastal areas and wetlands.

Interestingly, much of the water is stained a deep red-brown colour due to tannin leached from button grass and heathland. This adds another interesting element to any photos with water in them.

On land, the scrubby ankle to shin high bushland found almost everywhere is passable, but in most cases it’s easier to follow the established tracks that wind up mountains, hills, and small gullies rather than make your own tracks.

I can imagine Macro photographers would find much to explore in the textures, colours, and shapes of this diverse environment, so if you have a macro lens, pack it.

Fauna

Surprisingly, wildlife is scarce, but present. Rare birds in the area include orange-bellied parrots and Tasmanian Azure kingfishers, while sightings of short-tailed shearwaters, little penguins, pacific gulls, black-faced cormorants, sooty oystercatchers, black swans, and the majestic white-bellied sea eagle are all possible.

Other land-based animals you can expect to see include wallabies, wombats, rabbits (abandoned on a small islet by French sailors) and dolphins, although sightings depend on the season and weather.

If you’re a birder, I recommend taking a 100-400mm or 100-500mm lens. Just remember that photographing birds can be challenging as you might want to use a slower shutter speed (1/125s) at a lower ISO to capture perched birds, but you will need a shutter speed of over 1/2000s to capture them as they take-off or are in flight.

Indigenous heritage

The Port Davey area was the homeland of the Ninene people for around 35,000 years. Today, little can be seen of their existence, although visiting Melaleuca and Stephens Beach reveals what would have been settlement areas.

On the far end of Stephens Beach, you’ll find remnants of multiple large shell middens close to a clear water brook. You can only begin to imagine the beautiful paradise that was.  

European history

The area was prospected for tin, logging, and fur trapping during the early 19th Century, and it also was used as a refuge for whaling ships who needed to replenish their stores.

Today, the area of Port Davey is not populated, but the family of a deceased tin miner called Deny King still reside at Melaleuca and you can visit their residences near the disused mining facility and explore their abandoned (but maintained) garden home by the water. Deny has a well-documented life in the area and is worth a further look if interested.

The team

Each team member brought their individual skills for a memorable trip. Peter Marmion, also known as ‘Wiki Pete’ due to his profound encyclopaedic knowledge of the area, is a great guide and champion storyteller. I suggest you request to hear his mushroom story if you’re lucky enough to travel with him.

Another team member of note is Jimmy Emms, a very talented land and seascape photographer. He is well versed with the lay of the land and the times and places to go to get brilliant shots.

Jimmy not only assisted the more novice photographers with shooting tips during the day, but at night helped them download, edit, and grade images to get the most out of their RAW files.

And finally, and perhaps most importantly, greeting you on board is five-star chef Courtney Drew, who sources all the best local Tasmanian produce including wines, whiskeys, and beers.

Until now, Tasmania’s wild southwest has been a location few ever got to experience, and even fewer photographers for that matter.

Instead of heading overseas, don’t forget that we have many incredibly photogenic world-beating locations only a short plane ride away.

If you’re keen to explore a place that’s off the beaten track while also having many creature comforts to enjoy as well, you’ll love visiting this remarkable place.

Tim Levy travelled to Tasmania courtesy of On Board. ❂

With submissions from 140+ countries, Mexican photographer Ivan Silva clinched the Grand Prize with a stunning shot of a young football fan.