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The acclaimed retrospective exhibition Teenie Harris, Photographer: An American Story, on view at Carnegie Museum of Art through April 7, 2012, is accompanied by two products that will be of interest to devotees of photography and jazz music. Teenie Harris, Photographer: Image, Memory, History, a 208-page fully illustrated book on the life and work of notable African-American photojournalist Charles “Teenie” Harris, and Hill District Beat: A Tribute to Teenie Harris, an enhanced CD of original jazz music inspired by Harris’s photographs and featuring more than 100 of his images, are available for holiday gift giving at the Carnegie Museum of Art Store.
Charles “Teenie” Harris (1908–1998) photographed the events and daily life of African-Americans in Pittsburgh’s Hill District for the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the nation’s most influential Black newspapers.
Since 2001, Carnegie Museum of Art has housed Harris’s archive of nearly 80,000 photographic negatives. A richly detailed record of public personalities and events, and the lives of average people, the archive is considered one of the most important documentations anywhere of 20th-century African-American life.
Teenie Harris, Photographer: Image, Memory, History features a preface by Deborah Willis and significant essays by scholars Cheryl Finley, Laurence Glasco, and Joe Trotter. The book analyzes Harris as an artist for the first time, explores the social and historical context of his photographs, and provides a detailed biography of the photographer. It includes 100 plates of Harris’s signature work and a complete bibliography and chronology. Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in cooperation with Carnegie Museum of Art, the book is available for $24.95 in softcover, and $55 in hardcover.
Hill District Beat: A Tribute to Teenie Harris is an original soundtrack created for the exhibition by MCG Jazz and performed by the MCG Jazz All Stars. When played on a computer, the enhanced CD features music synced with more than 100 Teenie Harris images of notable personalities of the era. The seven pieces on the CD follow the chronological arc of Harris’s photos. Emulating the sounds of big-band jazz from the mid-1930s to the 1970s, Hill District Beat features Swing, Swing/Blues, Bebop, Cool, and Hard Bop tunes by Pittsburgh composers Jay Ashby and Mike Tomaro. Stanley Turrentine, who grew up in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, contributes a bluesy/swinging jazz melody in what is known around the world as “The Pittsburgh sound.” The CD is available for $14.95.
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