Self-Fashioning and Sorrow: Queer Black Fugitivity in Carl Van Vechten’s Photographs of Nella Larsen

This article examines three black-and-white portrait photographs of the Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen (1891–1964) by Carl Van Vechten (1880–1964). Dense with intricate patterns and layers of fabric, these photographs evoke Larsen’s engagement with fashion and identify her participation in what I call the Black feminist sartorial imagination, a tradition in which clothing became a medium for claiming the sexual pleasure and freedom of fugitivity. However, with their thick grays and Larsen’s somber, sidelong glances, the images are also replete with a sorrow that attests to the impediments Black women faced realizing the queer fugitivity of fashionable display. Set against the portrait photographs W. E. B. Du Bois exhibited at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900, I argue that Larsen’s collaboration with Van Vechten suggests she was resistant to aligning herself with images of sexual propriety to refute white supremacy, which moved her life, image, and writing in queer directions.

Duke Scholars

Author Kimberly Kay Lamm Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies