The Photograph

A photo is worth a thousand words, the cliché goes, but in The Photograph one photo unleashes thousands of special stories. About New York and its black residents, about pride and tradition, about the power of photography, and about the grandfather of director Sherman De Jesus.

De Jesus leaves for New York with a clear mission: to discover the story behind the only photo he has of his grandfather, Juan de Jesus. A black and white portrait of a proud man in a white tropical suit, a real gentleman in the 1920s. Important detail: Juan de Jesus was a black man.

Photographer James Van Der Zee (1886-1983) captured this zeitgeist in tens of thousands of photos. He portrayed black people as they themselves wanted to be seen: from their best side, in their best suit, as the people they were.

The Photograph shows which revolution Van Der Zee’s work unleashed and how the ideas of the Harlem Renaissance still live on everywhere in Harlem. From contemporary photographers such as Jamel Shabazz, who are inspired by Van Der Zee, to the bitter struggle of activists against the gentrification of the neighborhood that still symbolizes black pride and black culture.