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159 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 5 Echoes of a Renaissance Harlem’s Nostalgic Turn Photography, like no other medium of visual communication, has sustained Harlem as a site of memory in the American, if not global psyche. —Cheryl Finley, “Harlem Sites of Memory” In the epigraph above, art historian Cheryl Finley draws upon Pierre Nora’s concept of “site[s] of memory (les lieux des memoire)” to make sense of photography’s role in the construction of Harlem’s iconicity. In “Harlem Sites of Memory,” which appears in the Studio Museum’s catalogue for the 2003 Harlemworld: Metropolis as Metaphor show, Finley provides a brief history of Harlem photography in order to argue that “Harlem’s understanding of itself” is enabled and sustained through the photographic medium. For Finley, photographic “images of the past activate sites of memory thorough an engagement with the temporal spatial aspects of lieux de memoire.”1 Finley appropriates only the surface elements of Nora’s concept, yet her reference to the spatial and temporal aspects of les lieux des memoire serves as an apt metaphor for a consideration of the visual constructions of Harlem—its myths, its realities—at the beginning of a new millennium. Finley is correct in looking to Nora’s discussion of memory and history, especially his assertion that certain sites—“spaces, gestures, images, and objects”—embody memory precisely because they contain a “sense of historical continuity.”2 And what is Harlem, if not a place with an overdetermined sense of historical continuity? This impression of history-in-the-making has been present from the neighborhood ’s very beginning as an African American community, when new black residents, perhaps sold by Philip Payton’s marketing of the area, perceived that there was something different about Harlem. Finley’s essay, like the majority of the Harlemworld catalogue, focuses on photographic and architectural representations of Harlem, and yet Nora’s original discussion does not discount the effect of other media on the construction of sites of memory: “memory . . . relies entirely on the materiality of the trace, the immediacy of the recording, the visibility of the image. What began as writing ends as high fidelity and tape recording.” Nora continues, “the less memory is experienced from the inside the more it exists only through its exterior scaffolding and outward signs.”3 These particular signs of Harlem include many of the visual and written products of the Renaissance years, an archive that has left an indelible mark on present-day considerations of the neighborhood. Harlem Vibe: Revisioning VanDerZee This chapter opens with an image, a portrait of a man and a woman, draped in fur coats and standing in front of an automobile on a brownstone-lined street. The portrait, titled Couple in Raccoon Coats, is not the iconographic image by James VanDerZee from 1932, but rather its late-twentieth-century double, staged by photographer Barron Claiborne and used as the full-page frontispiece in Finley’s essay for the Harlemworld catalogue. The portrait was originally part of a series shot by Claiborne for a fashion spread, “Harlem Renaissance: Vintage Uptown Cool,” that appeared in the September 2002 issue of Vibe magazine.4 Intended to capture a particular place and time—Harlem 2002—the portrait resonates with many of the issues raised throughout Making a Promised Land. First, it relies on technology to make African American culture visible to itself and to a broader spectator/reader/consumer. Second, it does so by using Harlem’s ability to visually engender history and cultural memory through nostalgic iconography, while also suggesting the neighborhood’s continuing connections to African American progress. At one and the same time, therefore, the portrait signifies “Harlem 1932” and “Harlem 2002.” Certain ironies exist, however, under the surface of the VanDerZee/ Claiborne images. One the one hand, both portraits were taken by commercial photographers commissioned to sell a product. VanDerZee’s photograph, for example, presents a version of Harlem success: two affluent-looking Harlemites surrounded by luxurious fur and gleaming automotive technology. The idea being sold is one in which beautiful, successful people populate Harlem, the site of the African American dream. The latter image by Claiborne sells a similar idea, but its differences from the earlier version suggest some of the larger issues adhering to Harlem—and the idea of Harlem—in an early-twenty-firstcentury context defined increasingly by redevelopment, gentrification, and consumerism. The Claiborne portrait as it appears in Vibe also sells an idea of African American success and place through references to specific brands...

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