Spirit of a Community:
The Photographs of Charles "Teenie" Harris

Jan. 21 – Mar. 8, 2002 

Main Gallery 

Charles 'Teenie' Harris chronicled the African-American community in Pittsburgh for over forty years. As a photographer for the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the pre-eminent black news weeklies in America, Teenie traveled the alleys, workplaces, nightclubs, and ballparks of his native city with a Speed Graphic black and white camera in hand. Whether backstage with Dizzy Gillespie and Lena Horne, in the dugout with Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige, or on the streets of the Hill District or Homewood-Brushton, Teenie Harris documented black Pittsburgh with his well-crafted photographs. His comprehensive collection of images creates a historically and sociologically accurate record of Pittsburgh and its African-American history from the 1930s through the 1970s. A sensitive observer, Harris presents an honest view of the life and events of his time, without editorialization and opinion. Polotics, sports, entertainment, church, home, and community figure prominently in the artist's images of Pittsburgh. This exhibition celebrates the vibrancy of Pittsburgh's Hill District and neighborhoods--its history, identity, and character--during the time when the black community was creating its own unique sources of strength, vitality, and hope, through the complicated era of desegregation, and again into the time of re-segregation.

The compositional elements in each image, their placement and emphasis, reveal Teenie's sharp and sensitive eye behind the camera. These photographs are now more than ephemera with a caption for a newspaper. They have transcended that designation as fine art prints that carry with them the implications of the time when Teenie lived combined with a contemporary observer's insight as well. All of the photographs were printed and cropped by Gus Kayafas of Palm Press, Inc. who used his expertise to make them the way he felt Teenie would have wanted them to appear. This exhibition is the first time that Teenie's photographs are being seen in such quantity as fine art. The Westmoreland Museum of American Art and the Samek Art Gallery hope that this will be just the beginning of further attention paid to this artist's work to insure that the legacy of Teenie Harris' lives on.

     -Westmoreland Museum of Art