Marie Laurencin (artist)

Label TextCarl Van Vechten is probably best known as a writer, man about town, and bon vivant, but, in recent years, growing attention has been paid to his work as a photographer. While Van Vechten took thousands of portraits of celebrities, artists, literati, friends, and lovers over the course of his lifetime, none of his photographs were sold or exhibited while he was alive. Van Vechten learned to take photographs in the 1890s as a teenager in Cedar Rapids, IA with his family’s box camera, a type of simple rectangular camera that was first released by Kodak in 1888 and widely adopted by amateurs. Around 1930, Van Vechten learned about a new, lightweight Leica camera that allowed amateurs to more easily take crisp images on the go. His interest in photography quickly became an obsession, and he turned a room in his New York apartment into a studio and darkroom where he would invite the glittering stars of the day.

DimensionsSheet: 7 x 5 in. (17.8 x 12.7 cm)

Accession Number 2025.120

Classificationsphotograph

ProvenanceArtist; Mark Lutz [bequest from the previous, 1964]; Philadelphia Museum of Art [gift from the previous, 1965]; Des Moines Art Center [gift from the previous, 2025]