Charles ‘Teenie’ Harris photographed Pittsburgh for forty years — and in doing so, he preserved a city. The legendary Pittsburgh Courier photographer shot more than 80,000 images between the 1930s and the 1970s: jazz clubs and church picnics, ballplayers and barbershops, celebrities passing through and neighbors living their everyday lives in the Hill District and beyond.
The Charles ‘Teenie’ Harris Archive at Carnegie Museum of Art protects that treasure — one of the richest photographic records of 20th-century African American life anywhere — and its permanent archive gallery at the museum rotates selections for visitors. Faces beam from the walls: proud, stylish, joyful Pittsburgh, photographed by one of its own.
The archive gallery is a permanent exhibition at Carnegie Museum of Art, 4400 Forbes Avenue in Oakland. The museum also makes thousands of Harris images searchable online at cmoa.org — bring tissues, and time.
