James Van Der Zee lived and photographed in Harlem for many decades earning him his reputation as both the neighborhood's preeminent photographer and one of the first great African-American photographers of the Twentieth century. Van Der Zee's photographs captured every aspect of middle-class life in Harlem beginning with the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s to late portraits of such well-known artists as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Romare Bearden. This photograph documents the congregants of one Harlem synagogue in the late 1950s.