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Black History from Pittsburgh
EVERY WEEK we will honor and represent our African American heroes. TO VIEW BLACK HISTORY ARCHIVES CLICK HERE
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We
know that it is very important for the world to know about our heritage.
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The
Week of April 1st, 2007: IN BLACK
HISTORY
Charles "Teenie" Harris (1908—1998) was an accomplished African-American photographer. Harris
was born in 1908 in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, USA,
the son of hotel owners in the city's Hill District. Early
in the 1930s he purchased his first camera and opened a photography
studio. He freelanced for the Washington D.C. news picture magazine,
Flash!. From the 1936 to the 1975 Harris chronciled life in
the black neighborhoods of the city for the Pittsburgh Courier,
one of America's oldest black newspapers. He was nicknamed
"One Shot" because he rarely made his subjects
sit for retakes. Harris took more than 80,000 images during his
career. The body of his work constitutes arguably the largest
and most complete photographic documentation of a minority community
in the United States. Unlike his more celebrated African-American
contemporaries, such as James Van Der Zee, known for studio portraits,
or Gordon Parks, who traveled widely as a photojournalist, Harris
was a working-class photographer tethered to a job with a circumscribed
beat. His work was rarely seen outside of Pittsburgh, until
after his death in 1998. READ MORE ABOUT CHARLES "TEENIE" HARRIS RIGHT HERE REST IN PEACE: (R.I.P.)
Andrea Lee Oliver Woodson aka "Andy" aka "Mother" Lucy Curry , Dot Talley, Vera Downing,
Bertrand "Goocher" Frye, Irma Woodson, Copyright 2007 Brotha Ash Productions. All Rights Reserved |
