Selected object from NMAAHC- Camera belonging to Mr. Charles “Teenie” Harris

Several factors drew me to this artifact at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC).  First, I believe that the camera is a powerful instrument to record historic moments.  Cameras can present the event in an unvarnished way and they can capture so many important historic details in only one image. A picture really is worth a thousand words. Cameras capture our faults and our triumphs as humans and greatly help illuminate the stories museums try to convey.  Photos can create emotion and empathy without saying one word. Many times they require no language interpretation.

I also was attracted to this object because I believe photographers can see the world the way that many of us rarely do. They can sense when something is occurring at its zenith to click the lens.  Such is the case with this camera.  It belonged to Mr. Charles “Teenie” Harris who was a photographer for the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the oldest African American newspapers in America. 

I did a bit of online research about Mr. Harris and he was remarkable! The Carnegie Museum of Art has a large portion of his massive 80,000 images he took of events in the black neighborhoods of Pittsburgh during the 1930s all the way up into the 1970s.  If you would like to watch a twenty-one minute story of Mr. Harris put together by the Carnegie Museum of Art, click here. 

Mr. Harris was nicknamed “One Shot” because he often just captured one image and then he would leave the event! Astounding when you see the emotion and importance of the kind of images he captured in everyday life in the communities and the array of celebrities that visited.  I’m curious to know when he used this camera in his career. Was it his favorite camera? Was the camera special to him for some professional or sentimental reason? What was socially occurring when he was using this camera? Did the camera witness something particularly tragic or uplifting?

This camera is on display at the NMAAHC. It is located on the third floor in the Making a Way Out of No Way exhibition and is object 2014.302.2.