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Matinee: 'The Charles (Teenie) Harris Archive'
6 September 2025
Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?
So we're pleased to present the 620th in our series of Saturday matinees today: The Charles (Teenie) Harris Archive.
This five-minute peek at the Teenie Harris Archive from the Carnegie Museum of Art celebrates the work of the Pittsburgh photographer who documented life in the city's black communities from the 1920s to the 1970s.
The collection, now held by the Carnegie Museum of Art after purchasing the negatives and all rights from the family in 2001, comprises more than 80,000 images taken between 1935 and 1975. While most of the images are black-and-white or color negatives, there are over six hundred prints in the collection as well.
As an early newspaper photographer for the Pittsburgh Courier, Harris did not caption his negatives. So in 2005, archivists began gathering oral histories from people whose lives intersected with Harris's or the subjects of his images. The archive now holds over 60 of these oral histories.
Born in 1908, Harris was raised in the city's Hill District, next to downtown. He worked for his brother's numbers racket until the fear of going to jail overwhelmed him and he begged his brother to lend him money to buy a camera.
His brother warned him you can't make any money with a camera. But that's what Teenie wanted to do.
He opened a studio in the Hill District and began taking portraits. People who saw the portraits wanted Teenie to take their portraits and the business flourished.
That led to a job as the first full-time photographer at the Pittsburgh Courier. Because the Hill District was the center of night life in the city, he would shoot whatever was going on in the clubs at night, rush home to process the film, make prints and rush back to the event to sell the prints. Or make even more money by getting rid of the evidence.
He became known as One Shot Harris because, as his son explains in the film, "he takes one shot and he's gone."
He captured all the celebrities who visited the city, including Lena Horne, Harry Belafonte, Erroll Garner, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Little Richard and Ray Charles. Not to mention the professional athletes who came into town, including Jackie Robinson and Muhammed Ali.
Harris died in 1998. But through the archive, One Shot continues to tell the story of the Hill District.