One Shot Harris: Select Photographs from the Teenie Harris Collection

Through Feb. 28… One Shot Harris: Select Photographs from the Teenie Harris Collection

Through Feb. 28

Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild

1815 Metropolitan St.

(412) 322-1773

With a little help from his brother and an interest in photography, Charles “Teenie” “One Shot” Harris, bought his first professional camera and took a shot at getting out of the numbers business. The year was 1931, and the camera was a hand-held Speed Graphic. Harris’s older brother, Woogie, who ran a successful local betting operation in their home town, the Hill District, loaned him $350 to buy it.

Soon after, the Pittsburgh Courier discovered Harris’ talent at capturing candid images of celebrities visiting Pittsburgh and sporting events. Harris started freelancing for the national black news weekly. He became its chief photojournalist in 1936 and stayed for more than 50 years, creating a profound visual history of his black urban community in Pittsburgh.

The story of his prolific career is told in the recently published book, “One Shot Harris” by Stanley Crouch. The large collection of Harris’ photographs in the book, currently exhibited at the Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild, tell a story of the black experience in a booming industrial steel town, where people of many ethnicities – whether they realized it or not – had something in common: appreciation of urban consumerism that the age of mass production brought. Some of these commonalities are revealed in images such as well-dressed interracial couples laughing in a crowded diner booth.

Harris’ pictures particularly document the thriving Hill District, which had developed culturally and economically as a result from the large numbers of blacks who had come to the area from the South. Although many jobs had opened up to them in the steel mills, they were subjected to segregation and discrimination.

Belief in their community is seen through images such as a group of confident, relaxed looking school-aged children stand closely behind their crossing guard peer. He may be showing off a bit, but is definitely part of the group as they stand close together and all look into the camera. The crossing guard’s outstretched arms touch the chests of the kids he is responsible for getting across the street. The tight, symmetrical composition contributes to the sense of cohesion of the group, which Harris seems to have used to say something about the community.

Harris’ collection also contains some all too realistic images of poverty and despair, such as pictures of families in slum housing or of detectives examining a dead body in a bar. Racism surfaces too. In one picture, an elderly woman sadly holds up hate mail covered in swastikas. The setting of her in front of her porch suggests she has recently received the messages threatening her race.

Another lingering image shows a dilapidated, sooty clapboard garage in front of which a couple men sit listlessly. The shadow included in the corner of the composition shows the sunny day they watch. A stark contrast is seen in the small white sign above the men, posted on the black building advertising “The Church of God” inside, which reflects the role of inner faith within a grim outside.

Most of Harris’ work, on the other hand, captures the vibrancy and pride that members of his community shared. There was a lot to be proud of. Lena Horne, Duke Ellington, Ray Charles and Louis Armstrong are a few of the jazz greats whom Harris captured regularly in intimate, candid shots between sets at popular clubs and theaters in the Hill District Harris covered the young and vigorous Cassius Clay and Joe Louis when they came through town. The Crystal Barbershop and Billiard Parlor, Willie Lowry’s Confectionery and West Auto Body Shop are some of the successful businesses that served the black communities remembered in Harris’s photographs.

As a photojournalist, Harris recorded everyday scenes as well as more significant events affecting the city – Martin Luther King Jr. holding a press conference at Pitt or President John F. Kennedy speaking in Monessen, Pa. All these important images can be seen at the Manchester Craftmen’s Guild through Feb. 28.