The Homoerotic Photography of Carl Van Vechten

I. Days in the Darkroom: Developing A Love Affair With Photography; II. Van Vechten and the Awakening of Black and Gay Harlem; III. Lure of the Primitive and Loss of Self; IV. Parallel Desires/Divergent Means; V. Van Vechten's Interracial "Pas de Deux"; VI. Inside Van Vechten's Camp; VII. The Scrapbooks; VIII. New Racial and Interracial Strategies in a Post-Van Vechten World; IX. Forever the "Intrepid Abolitionist"

"Smalls goes to great lengths to ensure that Van Vechten's photos are viewed as artifacts of their time-the 1930s and 1940s-and photographed by someone intimately familiar with the art movements of primitivism and modernism. Smalls analyzes some of the images with amazing detail." The Dallas Voice "[Smalls'] sexuality, his race, and his training are all filters for his astute assessment of the 34 homoerotic photos - many of them of black men, and just as many interracial - collected here. [His] honest tension informs, animates, and illuminates this landmark academic study." Q Syndicate "The Homoerotic Photography of Carl Van Vechten contains 60 photographs along with a learned but highly accessible discussion of the photographer and his place as an artist and as a gay man. Scholarship has rarely been this stimulating." Out magazine "Drawing on a wide range of primary and critical sources, [Smalls] not only uncovers a vital link in American cultural history but makes an important contribution to understanding contemporary culture." Publishers Weekly "James Smalls offers an original, provocative, thoughtful and necessary analysis of interracial homoerotic fetish and fantasy. His writing is well balanced and his argument considers how the images operate psychologically and socially during the historical moment of the Harlem Renaissance and during the present day. The book is an invaluable text in black studies, queer studies, and the Harlem Renaissance." Mark A. Reid, author of Black Lenses, Black Voices: African American Film Now "The book confirms the erotic curiosity inherent in Van Vechten's Harlem sponsorship and the voyeurism--obverse to the spectatorship of his criticism--that informed so much of his life." Bookforum Spring 2007 "thoroughly researched...it provides a useful addition to libraries focused on gender and/or black studies." Choice "Smalls shines a new light onto an understudied portion of Van Vechten's impressive cache of male nude photographs sealed