Black Photojournalism — A new book immortalises the work of 57 Black photographers reporting in the mid-20th century for Black newspapers and magazines. Covering the Civil Rights Movement, Jesse Jackson and more, the pictures are part history, part art.
From 1936 to 1975, Charles “Teenie” Harris crafted an indelible portrait of Black American life for the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the nation’s oldest Black newspapers. Nicknamed “One Shot” for his impeccable ability to distil the essence of the moment in a single frame, Harris amassed some 80,000 photographs of the community with aplomb, documenting scenes of everyday life with the same dignity he bestowed on visiting luminaries including Nina Simone and Lena Horne.
Pittsburgh native Charlene Foggie-Barnett remembers being photographed by Harris from infancy through her late 20s, his close relationship with her large family giving her an unparalleled vantage point into his work. “I’ve steadily seen Teenie’s work in the Pittsburgh Courier, in our family albums, and on the walls of our homes,” she says.
But it wasn’t until 2001 when the Carnegie Museum of Art acquired Harris’s archive when she realised his photographs were pieces of art themselves. Called to help identify the people in his images, Foggie-Barnett saw the whole of Harris’s collection in a new light – the portraits and reportage mixed among images of everyday life creating sheer delight. In time, she became Community Archivist of the Charles “Teenie” Harris Archive at the museum.
