Teenie Harris, Chronicler of the Hill District
Near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Charles Harris, known to everyone in Pittsburgh as Teenie, lived in this house on Mulford Street and kept his darkroom in the basement. Over four decades, from the nineteen thirties to the nineteen seventies, he took close to eighty thousand photographs of Pittsburgh's African American community on the Hill District, one of the most culturally rich Black neighborhoods in the country.
His images appeared regularly in the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the most widely circulated Black newspapers in America. He photographed everyday life: church gatherings, school graduations, street scenes. He also captured the jazz musicians who came through the Hill, from Dizzy Gillespie to Lena Horne. After his death in nineteen ninety-eight, the Carnegie Museum of Art acquired the entire archive. Today it stands as one of the most complete documentary records of Black urban life in twentieth-century America.
