Family. Friends. Neighbors. Rich and poor. Young and old. Business people. Children. Baseball. Music. Parades. Protests...

Teenie Harris' photographs are unsurpassed in the range of subjects they portray and for their ability to evoke the spirit of an era and to display the humanity of a people. Harris' 40-year career with the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the largest and most influential Black newspapers in the country, began as the nation emerged from the Depression and ended with the Civil Rights Movement. Numbering upwards of 80,000 images, this archive represents the largest single collection of photographic images of any Black community in the United States-or the world for that matter.

Harris' photographs have been extolled by The New York Times, exhibited in a number of venues, and made the subject of a recent book and several exhibitions. His photographs are now taking their place alongside those of such eminent photographers as James VanDerZee of New York City's Harlem. However, in its breadth and in its rich documentation of the life and community spirit of Black urban America, the Teenie Harris collection surpasses that of any other African American photographer. In the long run, his photographs may cause Pittsburgh's Hill District to join New York City's Harlem in forming our view of urban Black life from the 1930s to the 1960s.

In 2001, Carnegie Museum of Art acquired the collection from the Harris family. The museum is in the midst of a four-year project to catalogue and digitize the images. Using the museum's online collection search page, you can now view more than 45,000 images in the collection, and more are being added to the database each week. As caretakers of the archive, we are committed to providing access to these images as an invaluable historical and educational resource; but many of Harris' photographs and negatives were not labeled. We are asking the assistance of the public in helping to identify the people, places, and events in the images. If you can help us reconstruct the "story behind the picture," please share this information with us by using the e-mail link included in every Teenie Harris negative record in our online database.

Larry Glasco, Associate Professor
Department of History
University of Pittsburgh

 

  
  Access thousands of Teenie Harris images with our on-line collection search engine. Every Teenie Harris image you will find includes an email form for providing any information you may have about the image.



 

Vintage prints and negatives in the Teenie Harris Archive were acquired with funds provided by the Heinz Family Fund and by gift of the artist and the Harris Estate. General support for museum programs is provided by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The Heinz Endowments, and Allegheny County Regional Asset District. Cataloging and scanning of the Teenie Harris Archive is supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities Grant to Preserve and Create Access to Humanities Collections.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this release or the mentioned exhibitions and programs do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.