Born in Lenox, Massachusetts, Van Der Zee demonstrated an early gift for music, and was initially aspired to career as a professional violinist.

Van Der Zee was one of the first people to provide an early documentation of his community life in small town New England.

In March 1907, Van Der Zee married Kate L. Brown and they moved back to Lenox to have their daughter, Rachel, born in September.

In 1916, Van Der Zee and Gaynella Greenlee launched the Guarantee Photo Studio on West 125th Street in Harlem.

In 1919, he photographed the victory parade of the returning 369th Infantry Regiment, a predominantly African American unit sometimes called the "Harlem Hellfighters."

Its residents entrusted the visual documentation of their weddings, funerals, celebrities and sports stars, and social life to his carefully composed images.

Among his many renowned subjects were poet Countee Cullen, dancer Bill ("Bojangles") Robinson, Charles M. "Daddy" Grace, Joe Louis, Florence Mills, and black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey.

[9] Van Der Zee worked predominantly in the studio and used a variety of props, including architectural elements, backdrops, and costumes, to achieve stylized tableaux vivant in keeping with late Victorian and Edwardian visual traditions.

[10] In 1982, at age 96, Van Der Zee photographed 21-year-old painter Jean-Michel Basquiat for the January 1983 issue of Interview magazine.

[13] In the spring and summer of 1924, Van Der Zee worked to document the members and activities of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).

Fulfilling Garvey's wishes, Van Der Zee's job was to project a positive image of the Association, especially to emphasize the strength and social standing of its membership, the so-called Garveyites.

Nowhere in Van Der Zee's visual record was there any hint of the controversy surrounding Garvey in the early 1920s, a period when the leader was subject to public interrogation, quarrels with the writer and philosopher W.E.B.

[14] In 1969, Van Der Zee gained worldwide recognition when his work was featured in the exhibition Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900-1968 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

[14] As art historian Sharon Patton observed, Van Der Zee not only documented the Harlem Renaissance, but also helped create it.