Exhibition: ‘Thomas Ruff: New Works’ at David Zwirner, New York

Exhibition dates: 18th November 2016 – 5th January 2017

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958) 'press++28.19' 2016

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958)
press++28.19
2016
Chromogenic print
72 1/2 x 93 1/2 inches (184 x 237.5cm)
Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York/London

 

 

The first posting of a new year and we are off to a cracking start.

In my opinion, Thomas Ruff is one of the most creative contemporary photo-media artists working today. Since the early 1980s, Ruff has constantly pushed the boundaries of both photography and its representation of space time, culture and identity. From the early interiors, through hyperrealist portraiture, haunting night vision photographs, stereoscopes, nudes based on internet pornography and my particular favourites, the “jpegs” series (see the David Zwirner website for a survey of Ruff’s work), the artist has a wonderful self-effacing way of interrogating contemporary culture. Ruff turns the world on its head by looking at things from a different point of view. Through the use of scale, colour, manipulation and the digital layering of information, he proposes an acknowledgment of the strangeness of the world in which we live and the fracturing of seemingly holistic identities.

The artist is at his probing best again in his new series, press++, which features photomontages of the back and front of press images of various subjects including film stars, car crashes, bank robbers, car advertisements and, most notably, planes and space exploration. “Interested equally in the subject matter (and any touch-ups) on the front of the paper and the words, stamps, signatures, and smudges on the back, he thus created seamless montages of image and text, in the process compromising the integrity of the former as well as adding relevant context. The overlap causes each side to lose its intended information and merge into a new image altogether.” As the press release continues, “press++ continues Ruff’s long-standing interest in the deconstruction of the image and the new structures of photography following digital technology… As layers of information coexist seamlessly, the idea of a source becomes increasingly obsolescent and the image acquires even greater agency. The information of the press image is lost in favour of an image of its own artistic value.”

In this sense, that the press image is lost in favour of an image that radiates it own artistic value, the strongest images in this new series are the plane and space exploration ones, and for this reason I have concentrated on them in this posting. The images of film stars, car advertisements, car crashes and bank robbers are much less successful – the film stars because the original image is already laden with cultural semiotics (beauty and the surreality of star power) that cannot be so easily broken down / overwritten; the car advertisements because of the prosaic nature of the original image and the box-like design of the cars; and the car crashes (Warhol) and bank robbers because of the strong verisimilitude of the original image, the photographs relationship to its referent, which does not allow the images to be transformed so easily into new artistic works.

Only in the works of planes and space exploration does the new series take flight – a flight of fancy if you like – through the deconstruction of the original image. Here, layers of information coexist seamlessly and the idea of a singular source becomes increasingly obsolescent. Here, aerodynamic planes soar “Beyond Earth”; Gloster “Meteor” aircraft strike vertically through the clouds surrounded by a spiralling blue line, as though the plane were breaking through the limits of the Earth; bursting Aerobee rockets are excised by thick black lines; Snark guided missiles engage Associated Press Wirephoto Notices of reproduction intent (in which, now, the rocket cannot be used for the purposes of trade); and a Little Joe rocket roars skyward through a space “3 cols full deep” on the PICTURE PAGE on November 5th 1959. The day of the week was a Thursday.

Only in these photomontages is the series really successful in its goal… to produce images with their own artistic value beyond that of the original document. But what a triumph these plane and space exploration images are. They take the picture away from its origins, the rockets and planes away from the Earth, and the viewer away from the stable ground on which they stand. Conceptually they are tight and inventive, subverting known taxonomies of pictorial construction. Spiritually, they take the viewer away from themselves into another world, into Barthes’ extended form of punctum: time. These vertiginous images are indeed “the vertigo of time defeated.” Full deep.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to David Zwirner for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Thomas Ruff (born 1958) is a German photographer, known for his blown up passport-like photo large scale portrait, executed between 1981 and 1985. In 2003 he published a series of nudes based on internet pornography, which were digitally processed and obscured without using any camera or traditional photographic device. Ruff’s “Substrat” series (2002-2003), continued to explore digitally altered Web-based pictures, this time based on Japanese manga and anime cartoons, although the source material was altered and manipulated so the had no visual memory of the original image. In 2009, he produced “jpegs”, another large-scale series of photographs exclusively using downloaded images, which bared lots of jpeg compression artefacts.

 

Installation view of 'Thomas Ruff New Works' at David Zwirner New York, 18 November 2016 - 05 January, 2017 showing at right, Tomas Ruff's 'press++30.18' 2016

 

Installation view of Thomas Ruff New Works at David Zwirner New York, 18 November 2016 – 05 January, 2017 showing at right, Tomas Ruff’s press++30.18, 2016. Chromogenic print, 87 1/2 x 72 1/2 inches (222.3 x 184cm)

 

Installation view of 'Thomas Ruff New Works' at David Zwirner New York, 18 November 2016 - 05 January, 2017 showing at left, Thomas Ruff's 'press++70.01' 2016

 

Installation view of Thomas Ruff New Works at David Zwirner New York, 18 November 2016 – 05 January, 2017 showing at left, Thomas Ruff’s press++70.01, 2016. Chromogenic print, 72 1/2 x 88 3/4 inches (184 x 225.5cm)

 

Installation view of 'Thomas Ruff New Works' at David Zwirner New York, 18 November 2016 - 05 January, 2017 showing at left, Thomas Ruff's 'press++22.01' 2015. Chromogenic print, 88 15/16 x 72 7/8 inches (226 x 185cm); and at right, Thomas Ruff's 'press++28.04' 2016. Chromogenic print, 92 1/2 x 72 1/2 inches (235 x 184cm)

 

Installation view of Thomas Ruff New Works at David Zwirner New York, 18 November 2016 – 05 January, 2017 showing at left, Thomas Ruff’s press++22.01, 2015. Chromogenic print, 88 15/16 x 72 7/8 inches (226 x 185cm); and at right, Thomas Ruff’s press++28.04, 2016. Chromogenic print, 92 1/2 x 72 1/2 inches (235 x 184cm)

 

Installation view of 'Thomas Ruff New Works' at David Zwirner New York, 18 November 2016 - 05 January, 2017 showing at left, Thomas Ruff's 'press++09.26' 2016

 

Installation view of Thomas Ruff New Works at David Zwirner New York, 18 November 2016 – 05 January, 2017 showing at left, Thomas Ruff’s press++09.26, 2016. Chromogenic print, 72 1/2 x 92 5/8 inches (184 x 235.3cm)

 

Installation view of 'Thomas Ruff New Works' at David Zwirner New York, 18 November 2016 - 05 January, 2017 showing at left, Thomas Ruff's 'press++28.19' 2016. Chromogenic print, 72 7/8 x 93 3/4 inches (185 x 238cm); and at right, 'press++21.11' 2016. Chromogenic print, 102 x 72 1/2 inches (259.1 x 184 cm)

 

Installation view of Thomas Ruff New Works at David Zwirner New York, 18 November 2016 – 05 January, 2017 showing at left, Thomas Ruff’s press++28.19, 2016. Chromogenic print, 72 7/8 x 93 3/4 inches (185 x 238cm); and at right, press++21.11, 2016. Chromogenic print, 102 x 72 1/2 inches (259.1 x 184 cm)

 

Installation view of 'Thomas Ruff New Works' at David Zwirner New York, 18 November 2016 - 05 January, 2017 showing at left, Thomas Ruff's 'press++21.11' 2016

 

Installation view of Thomas Ruff New Works at David Zwirner New York, 18 November 2016 – 05 January, 2017 showing at left, Thomas Ruff’s press++21.11, 2016. Chromogenic print, 102 x 72 1/2 inches (259.1 x 184cm)

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958) 'press++28.04' 2016

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958)
press++28.04
2016
Chromogenic print
92 1/2 x 72 1/2 inches (235 x 184cm)
Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York/London

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958) 'press++70.01' 2016

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958)
press++70.01
2016
Chromogenic print
72 7/8 x 89 inches (185 x 226cm)
Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York/London

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958) 'press++32.10' 2016

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958)
press++32.10
2016
Chromogenic print
15 x 11 7/8 inches (38.1 x 30cm)
Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York/London

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958) 'press++65.33' 2016

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958)
press++65.33
2016
Chromogenic print
11 7/8 x 14 7/8 inches (30 x 37.6cm)
Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York/London

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958) 'press++65.21' 2016

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958)
press++65.21
2016
Chromogenic print
11 7/8 x 14 7/8 inches (30 x 37.6cm)
Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York/London

 

 

David Zwirner is pleased to present press++, a new series of works by Thomas Ruff on view at 533 West 19th Street in New York.

Working in distinct series since the late 1970s, Ruff has approached different genres of photography, including portraiture, architecture, astronomy, the nude, surveillance footage, reportage, and photograms. Using a wide range of technological approaches, and often pushing the limits of photographic representation in the process, he has reinvented historical conventions and expectations of the medium. In his considered approach to the means and possibilities of photography, Thomas Ruff explores a breadth of themes that is reflected in the range of techniques he employs: analogue and digital exposures taken by the artist exist in his practice alongside computer generated imagery, photographs from scientific archives, and pictures culled and manipulated from newspapers, magazines, and the Internet.

Shown here for the first time, press++ features large-scale photographs of archival media clippings from American newspapers that relate to the theme of space exploration. Ruff scanned the front and back of the original documents, which he has been collecting over several years, and combined the two sides in Adobe Photoshop. Interested equally in the subject matter (and any touch-ups) on the front of the paper and the words, stamps, signatures, and smudges on the back, he thus created seamless montages of image and text, in the process compromising the integrity of the former as well as adding relevant context. The overlap causes each side to lose its intended information and merge into a new image altogether. As such, the often disrespectful treatment of press pictures by newspaper editors becomes obvious, as text, cropping, and retouching can all fundamentally change the original document.

press++ continues Ruff’s long-standing interest in the deconstruction of the image and the new structures of photography following digital technology. It relates to earlier series by the artist including Newspaper Photographs (1990-1991), in which images were sourced from analog newspaper prints, and jpegs (2004-2007), where he used digitally disseminated photographs. The new works further recall the emergence of photomontage in Germany in the 1920s, where it was employed by Dada artists as a potent and subversive political tool. Ruff’s digital composites, however, are not concerned with the often fragmented and surrealistic effects produced by these art historical precedents, but with the treatment of the photographic image when it is redistributed and re-archived. As layers of information coexist seamlessly, the idea of a source becomes increasingly obsolescent and the image acquires even greater agency. The information of the press image is lost in favour of an image of its own artistic value.

Press release from David Zwirner

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958) 'press++01.38' 2015

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958)
press++01.38
2015
Chromogenic print
11 1/4 x 14 7/8 inches (30 x 37.8cm)
Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York/London

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958) 'press++09.27' 2016

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958)
press++09.27
2016
Chromogenic print
14 1/2 x 11 7/8 inches (36.9 x 30cm)
Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York/London

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958) 'press++20.56' 2016

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958)
press++20.56
2016
Chromogenic print
14 1/2 x 11 7/8 inches (36.7 x 30cm)
Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York/London

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958) 'press++21.11' 2016

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958)
press++21.11
2016
Chromogenic print
102 x 72 1/2 inches (259.1 x 184cm)
Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York/London

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958) 'press++22.01' 2015

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958)
press++22.01
2015
Chromogenic print
88 15/16 x 72 7/8 inches (226 x 185cm)
Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York/London

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958) 'press++01.64' 2016

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958)
press++01.64
2016
Chromogenic print
15 1/4 x 11 1/4 inches (38.5 x 30cm)
Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York/London

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958) 'press++24.75' 2016

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958)
press++24.75
2016
Chromogenic print
14 7/8 x 11 7/8 inches (37.6 x 30cm)
Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York/London

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958) 'press++25.05' 2015

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958)
press++25.05
2015
Chromogenic print
88 7/8 x 72 7/8 inches (226 x 185cm)
Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York/London

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958) 'press++02.20' 2015

 

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958)
press++02.20
2015
Chromogenic print
15 3/8 x 11 7/8 inches (39 x 30cm)
Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York/London

 

 

David Zwirner
New York, NY 10011
Phone: 212 727 2070

Opening hours:
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David Zwirner website

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Exhibition: ‘Teenie Harris, Photographer: An American Story’ at Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Exhibition dates:  29th October 2011 – 7th April 2012

 

Teenie Harris. 'Construction site with bulldozer, two men, including one in front holding child, large tank with hose, and car on right, possibly in construction site of Belmar Gardens' c. 1954

 

Teenie Harris (American, 1908-1998)
Construction site with bulldozer, two men, including one in front holding child, large tank with hose, and car on right, possibly in construction site of Belmar Gardens
c. 1954
Gelatin silver print
© Carnegie Museum of Art

 

 

What an astonishing photographer this man was. These photographs are a revelation. African American artist Charles “Teenie” Harris, captured “the essence of daily African-American life in the 20th century. For more than 40 years, Harris – as lead photographer of the influential Pittsburgh Courier newspaper – took almost 80,000 pictures of people from all walks: presidents, housewives, sports stars, babies, civil rights leaders and even cross-dressing drag queens.”

While Harris is most famous for depicting an innovative and thriving black urban community – daily life in Pittsburgh’s Hill District – it is the less figurative, more abstract urban landscape work that I am interested in here. Hence I have put four outstanding photographs that I picked out from the Archive at the top of the posting.

Earlier photographs of the city from the 1940s, such as Large two story home with attic, porch, double entryway, and yard, with young child on steps alone, next to smaller two story home with porches on both stories (c. 1940-45, below) have a touch of Walker Evans about them. Note how in this photograph the eve of the large two story home roof touches the top of the negative (allowing an exit for the eye at the top of the image), beautifully balanced on the left-hand side by the intrusion of the roof of another out of frame building and its shadow cast on the ground. The spatial separation between this roof and the porch of the smaller two story home is critical, as is the punctum of the child standing on the stoop. There are beautiful spaces in this photograph, as the eye plays across its surface, taking in form and detail, light and shade, eventually escaping down the right hand side of the building to the sky beyond.

It is only when we get to the 1950s that Harris really seems to hit his straps in these photographs of the urban landscape. Personally, I can’t remember any other photographs like them. By this time he has developed his own signature, his own voice. And what a voice it is!

In the three remaining photographs at the top of the posting there is a conciseness to his vision of the world, a spatial spareness, even sparseness that is very eloquent. In Construction site with bulldozer (c. 1954, below), possibly a photograph of the site of Belmar Gardens, Pittsburgh’s first black-owned housing cooperative, the landscape is shot from below up a slight incline, bookended with raised bank at left and car at right framing the image plane and holding it together. But it is the space around the central figures as they look off into the distance that is so magical – the blackened, textural ground playing off the cloudless sky with single tree at left. That space in the foreground, between the bottom of the image and the figures is tensioned so well with the distance between the figures and the top edge of the negative: Harris has an intimate understanding of what he wants to achieve in this image – spatially and narratively. The hope of the future.

The same can be said for Three story brick row houses with mansard roofs (c. 1958, below). Again, there is a spareness to his rendition of space and a complexity to his imaging of tone. It is almost like there is a dividing line between night and day, between the city in snow and the city in darkness, the ying yang of existence. Observe the light car is in darkness and the dark car in light; the dark trees, the light telegraph post; the space between the cars which no car could ever fit through; and the smallness of the child walking down the street. Incredible. Again, there is a openness to Harris’ rendition of space in Young men playing sandlot baseball with steel mill in background (c. 1955, below). Let your eyes soak in the open sky; the verticals of dark chimneys, left and light chimneys, right; the building at left perched atop the embankment; the composition of the figures across the middle of the image, reminiscent of a piece of music; the open space of the baseball sandlot at the bottom of the photograph with faint white line delineation and figure at right holding up the edge of the image. This is a master at work.

In this mature style, Harris has no need to fill space with an urban mass or congeries. These are spaces that matter, spaces of matter but these spaces are not empty, negative spaces, but active, fluid spaces, the space of possibilities. He understands what he wants to say so well, he is so confident of his previsualisation of the urban spaces of the city they become uniquely his own – open, engaging, optimistic. This is his voice, his gift, his legacy to the world – for me, not so much the portraits of Afro-American culture, but the spaces of the city as a metaphor for change within that culture. His reading of the landscape is his unique field of vision: in the stillness of these photographs time no longer passes, for the author and for the viewer. His images transcend place and, as such, like Atget before him, he deserves to be recognised as an artist who captured a changing world. Further research on this aspect of his art would seem appropriate.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

I am most grateful to Tey Stiteler for allowing me to pick the photographs I wanted for this posting. This help was crucial as I wanted to talk about the less figurative work in the Teenie Harris Archive. Many thankx to the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Teenie Harris Archive for allowing me to publish the photographs and book pdf in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

Teenie Harris. 'Three story brick row houses with mansard roofs, and small child on sidewalk of tree lined street with automobiles' c. 1958

 

Teenie Harris (American, 1908-1998)
Three story brick row houses with mansard roofs, and small child on sidewalk of tree lined street with automobiles
c. 1958
Gelatin silver print
© Carnegie Museum of Art

 

Teenie Harris. 'Young men playing sandlot baseball with steel mill in background' c. 1955

 

Teenie Harris (American, 1908-1998)
Young men playing sandlot baseball with steel mill in background
c. 1955
Gelatin silver print
© Carnegie Museum of Art

 

Teenie Harris. 'Large two story home with attic, porch, double entryway, and yard, with young child on steps alone, next to smaller two story home with porches on both stories' c. 1940-1945

 

Teenie Harris (American, 1908-1998)
Large two story home with attic, porch, double entryway, and yard, with young child on steps alone, next to smaller two story home with porches on both stories
c. 1940-1945
Gelatin silver print
© Carnegie Museum of Art

 

 

Teenie Harris, Photographer: An American Story, the first major retrospective exhibition of the work and legacy of African American artist Charles “Teenie” Harris, will be on view at Carnegie Museum of Art from October 29, 2011, to April 7, 2012.

The groundbreaking exhibition will celebrate the artist/photographer whose work is considered one of the most complete portraits anywhere of 20th-century African American experience. Large-scale, themed photographic projections of nearly 1,000 of Teenie Harris’s greatest images accompanied by an original jazz soundtrack will generate an immersive experience in the exhibition’s opening gallery. Subsequent galleries will present a chronological display of these photographs at a conventional scale, and give visitor access to the more than 73,000 catalogued and digitised images in the museum’s Teenie Harris Archive. The exhibition will offer an examination of Harris’s working process and artistry, and audio commentary on the man and his work by the people who knew him. In addition, the photographs and many of these materials will be accessible on Carnegie Museum of Art’s website.

“Since 2001, our museum has been the repository of the Teenie Harris Archive. This exhibition marks the culmination of a long effort to preserve and document an extensive collection of historically and artistically important images,” says Lynn Zelevansky, The Henry J. Heinz II Director of Carnegie Museum of Art. “We are honoured to present this retrospective of a photographer whose body of work gives so much to us.”

During his 40-year career as freelance and staff photographer for the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the nation’s most influential black newspapers, Teenie Harris (1908-1998) produced more than 80,000 images of Pittsburgh’s African American community. The photographs, taken from the 1930s to the 1970s, capture a period of momentous change for black Americans. His subjects ranged from the everyday lives of ordinary people to visits by powerful and glamorous national figures to Pittsburgh, the nation’s industrial centre. From birthday celebrations to civil rights boycotts, the distinctive vision of Harris’s photographs folds into the larger narrative of American history, art, and culture.

 

Charles “Teenie” Harris

Teenie Harris grew up in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, a neighbourhood once called “the crossroads of the world.” A serious photographer from the age of 18, he started his professional photographic career in 1937 when he opened a studio and began to take on freelance assignments. In 1941, Harris was appointed staff photographer for the Pittsburgh Courier, the nation’s preeminent black newsweekly. His images were disseminated nationally through the Courier, and played a key role in how African Americans visualised themselves.

Like the Scurlock Studio in Washington, DC, James Van Der Zee in New York, and P. H. Polk in Alabama, Harris depicted an innovative and thriving black urban community, in spite of the segregationist policies and attitudes of mid-century America. His images captured daily life in the Hill – weddings, funerals, family portraits, parades, church events, street scenes, graduations – as well as of the great men and women who visited the neighbourhood, including Martin Luther King Jr., Paul Robeson, John F. Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt, Lena Horne, and Muhammad Ali. Some of the country’s finest jazz musicians – Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Ahmad Jamal, Sarah Vaughan, and Duke Ellington – were photographed by Harris alongside bartenders, waitresses, and dancing crowds.

The longevity of Harris’s career offers an outlook on historic shifts that took place in the lives of African Americans everywhere. In the era of segregated baseball, for example, Harris photographed two legendary Negro League baseball teams, the Pittsburgh Crawfords (which Harris cofounded in the mid-1920s) and Homestead Grays. Later, when baseball’s color barrier was broken, he photographed African American major league baseball players like Jackie Robinson and Roberto Clemente along with their teammates. The pride and optimism evident in Harris’s photos of the Double V campaign from the World War II era (victory abroad, victory for racial equality at home), turned to growing moods of frustration and anger evident in images of militant protests in the late 1950s and 1960s. These photographs provide important insights to issues that are still pertinent today.

“Teenie Harris had great empathy with his subjects and a talent for storytelling,” says Lippincott. “His images transcend place. Powerful and personal, they connect today’s viewers with a proud past and a vibrant artistic and cultural heritage. We hope that through this retrospective and traveling exhibition, Harris will be established in the canons of art, history, and photography.”

 

About the Exhibition

Nearly 1,000 of Harris’s most striking and iconic photographs will be digitally projected as life-sized images in the opening gallery. The images, organised into seven sections – “Crossroads,” “Gatherings,” “Urban Landscapes,” “Style,” “At Home,” “The Rise and Fall of the Crawford Grill,” and “Words and Signs” – will be synchronised with an original jazz score produced by MCG Jazz, one of the nation’s top organisations dedicated to the preservation, presentation, and promotion of jazz music. A second gallery will feature a chronological installation of small prints of the projected images that will include a referencing system for in-depth exploration of each photograph through a bank of computers and books also located in the gallery. In addition, the computers will provide access to the interactive website that has been created for the show.

At the entrance to the third gallery, a mini exhibition of 12 fine-art-quality 16 x 20″ prints selected by 12 experts will be accompanied by their personal analyses of the meaning, significance, and beauty of the chosen images. This gallery will also feature a large-scale map showing the places Harris lived, worked, and photographed and a multimedia presentation called “Artist at Work” that demonstrates Harris’s technical skill and artistic vision, and shows how newspapers and publishers cropped and edited his work in order to tell a particular story. “Artist at Work” marries audio recordings of the stories and memories of Teenie Harris, as told by his family, friends, colleagues, and models, with a montage of projected images relating to their tales.

In addition to an exhibition-specific website, the museum is collaborating with the University of Pittsburgh Press on an illustrated book offering new and unpublished scholarship about Harris, his work, and his times that will impact the fields of American and African American art, culture, and history.

 

About the Teenie Harris Archive

In 2001, Carnegie Museum of Art acquired the Teenie Harris archive from the Harris family and began a multiyear project to preserve, catalogue, digitise, and make the images available on the museum’s website for public view. Few of Harris’s negatives were titled and dated; since the acquisition of the archive, the museum has invited the public to help in the identification of the people, places, and activities in the photographs through a series of museum-based displays of his work, outreach presentations, meetings with oral historians, and online response forms that accompany the continually growing display of images on the museum’s website.

The Teenie Harris Archive Project is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, which designated the archive a “We the People” project in the spring of 2007. “We the People” is an initiative to encourage and strengthen the teaching, study, and understanding of American history and culture. Initial support for the Teenie Harris Archive Project was provided by the Heinz Endowments.

Press release from the Carnegie Museum of Art website

Teenie Harris Archive website

 

Teenie Harris. 'Man lying with arms crossed and ferns on his lap, in cabin of truck' c. 1940-1945

 

Teenie Harris (American, 1908-1998)
Man lying with arms crossed and ferns on his lap, in cabin of truck
c. 1940-1945
Gelatin silver print
© Carnegie Museum of Art

 

Teenie Harris. 'Wooden roller coaster, possibly at Rock Springs Park, Chester, West Virginia' c. 1941

 

Teenie Harris (American, 1908-1998)
Wooden roller coaster, possibly at Rock Springs Park, Chester, West Virginia
c. 1941
Gelatin silver print
© Carnegie Museum of Art

 

Teenie Harris. 'Deserted Alley' 1946-1970

 

Teenie Harris (American, 1908-1998)
Deserted Alley
1946-1970
Gelatin silver print
© Carnegie Museum of Art

 

 

Charles “Teenie” Harris had a photographic mission: going beyond the obvious or sensational to capture the essence of daily African-American life in the 20th century. For more than 40 years, Harris – as lead photographer of the influential Pittsburgh Courier newspaper – took almost 80,000 pictures of people from all walks: presidents, housewives, sports stars, babies, civil rights leaders and even cross-dressing drag queens. Now, a new exhibit and online catalog is showing the depth of Harris’ work, an archive showing a major artistic achievement that influenced people around the country.

“His shots of everyday people are amazing. People seem to kind of jump off the page,” said Stanley Nelson, an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and MacArthur genius grant winner who has made a number of acclaimed films on African-American artists, business people, and workers. “They don’t have the sense of somebody kind of looking in and spying on the community. For me his pictures are very unique,” Nelson said.

Harris was a gifted basketball player as a young man, and helped start a Negro League baseball team, too. His brother was Pittsburgh’s biggest bookie, and that gave him access to people throughout the city. But he found his mission at the Pittsburgh Courier, which was distributed all over the country via a network of Pullman train porters. Through the paper Harris had endless opportunities to chronicle daily life and to meet the rich, famous, and powerful. Harris photographed Richard Nixon, Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy and many musical greats, such as Nat King Cole and Duke Ellington. “That was the black national paper of record at the time,” said Laurence Glasco, a professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh.

Many people stopped by the Courier offices because of its clout with African-Americans, Glasco said. Yet Harris neither pandered to nor looked down on celebrities, he added. “He really didn’t have a cult of celebrity. He wouldn’t cross a street to shake a celebrity’s hand. He was interested in them, but he really saw them as just people. And that really comes out in his photographs,” Glasco said. A young Muhammad Ali, for example, is shown picking up his mother and holding her in his arms. “He had an equal opportunity lens,” recalled Teenie’s son, Charles Harris. “He just liked people.”

The partnership with the Courier was a perfect match, since its reporters and editors were also pushing for equal rights. And true to Pittsburgh traditions, Teenie Harris was a hard worker, on call virtually 24-hours a day. “No matter what time it was, they could call. A lot of times he didn’t sleep,” his son said.

Louise Lippincott, the Carnegie Museum of Art Curator, worked closely with Harris in the last years of his life. “He had a very strong personal desire to complete a positive view of African-Americans and counter the negative stereotypes in the white press. On the other hand, there’s nothing sugarcoated,” said Lippincott. Glasco adds that Harris took pictures of very poor people without exaggerating their situation. “You can look at them and say, ‘These are real people; they happen to be very poor.’ They’re more than those clothes they’re wearing. They were first and foremost a person.” One picture shows a little girl with a big smile sitting on the floor of a newsstand, reading a comic book with a small dog on her lap. A key piece of history that Harris and the Courier covered heavily was African-Americans who served in World War II and returned home demanding that they be accorded rights equal to white soldiers, sailors, and airmen.

“The drive for civil rights really began in World War II,” Lippincott said, far earlier than many imagine. Yet the photographs are more than just a rich trove of mid-century American history. They emerge as art because Harris became a master of composition and for decades took each picture with a large-format camera that had to be hand-loaded with a single piece of film for each shot. “I remember being just shocked and amazed at what an incredible photographer he was. He just had this incredible eye,” said Nelson, who noted that Harris earned the nickname “One Shot” for his ability to deliver an assignment with one photograph.

Many of the pictures show a successful – and happy – black middle class. One young woman is depicted posing on the hood of a 1950s car, with steel mills in the background, while another simply kneels while playing with two small dogs. And even before the civil rights movement, there are many pictures showing black and white children and adults together. Glasco notes that even some controversial pictures seem to defy current expectations of what the past was like. In one, a man in a car has a cross-dressing male companion on each side.

“They’re happy, they’re proud, they’re smiling. It’s a joyful thing,” Glasco said of the men openly dressing as women. At an annual parade in Pittsburgh’s Hill district, one car was often filled with cross-dressers who waved at crowds, he added. Glasco once saw a Harris picture of cross-dressers next to contemporary pictures with the same subject, and was struck by the anger and hostility of the people in the new pictures, and the openness of the people in the older ones.

The Carnegie Museum of Art purchased Harris’ entire collection in 2001, through the Heinz Family Fund. The exhibit at the museum includes almost 1000 photographs, slide shows, and a jazz soundtrack commissioned especially for the show, which is up until next April. It’s also scheduled to travel to Chicago, Birmingham, Alabama, and Atlanta in the future. People who can’t get to one of those museums can view almost 60,000 Harris images that have been scanned and put online along with audio interviews of people who knew him.”

By Kevin Begos, Associated Press, November 27, 2011 on Boston.com [Online] Cited 21/03/2012

 

Teenie Harris. 'Woman wearing one-piece skirted bathing suit reclining on swimming pool diving board' c. 1940-1945

 

Teenie Harris (American, 1908-1998)
Woman wearing one-piece skirted bathing suit reclining on swimming pool diving board
c. 1940-1945
Gelatin silver print
© Carnegie Museum of Art

 

Teenie Harris. 'Group portrait of two women and two men, woman on right wearing dark dress with wide brimmed hat, in interior with wainscoting and pictures on wall' c. 1940-1945

 

Teenie Harris (American, 1908-1998)
Group portrait of two women and two men, woman on right wearing dark dress with wide brimmed hat, in interior with wainscoting and pictures on wall
c. 1940-1945
Gelatin silver print
© Carnegie Museum of Art

 

Teenie Harris. 'Group portrait of eight male boxers, possibly Golden Gloves contenders, lined up in boxing ring' c. 1955

 

Teenie Harris (American, 1908-1998)
Group portrait of eight male boxers, possibly Golden Gloves contenders, lined up in boxing ring
c. 1955
Gelatin silver print
© Carnegie Museum of Art

 

Teenie Harris. 'Group portrait of women wearing church choir robes, posed outside in yard, with other houses, garage, and woman in background, seen from above' c. 1938-1945

 

Teenie Harris (American, 1908-1998)
Group portrait of women wearing church choir robes, posed outside in yard, with other houses, garage, and woman in background, seen from above
c. 1938-1945
Gelatin silver print
© Carnegie Museum of Art

 

Anonymous photographer. 'Charles "Teenie" Harris holding camera and standing in front of Flash Circulation office, 2132 Centre Avenue, Hill District' c. 1937

 

Anonymous photographer
Charles “Teenie” Harris holding camera and standing in front of Flash Circulation office, 2132 Centre Avenue, Hill District
c. 1937
Gelatin silver print
© Carnegie Museum of Art

 

 

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