Historic photographs from the heyday of the Black press

From 1936 to 1975, Charles ​“Teenie” Harris crafted an indelible portrait of Black American life for the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the nation’s oldest Black newspapers. Nicknamed ​“One Shot” for his impeccable ability to distil the essence of the moment in a single frame, Harris amassed some 80,000 photographs of the community with aplomb, documenting scenes of everyday life with the same dignity he bestowed on visiting luminaries including Nina Simone and Lena Horne. 

Pittsburgh native Charlene Foggie-Barnett remembers being photographed by Harris from infancy through her late 20s, his close relationship with her large family giving her an unparalleled vantage point into his work. ​“I’ve steadily seen Teenie’s work in the Pittsburgh Courier, in our family albums, and on the walls of our homes,” she says. 

But it wasn’t until 2001 when the Carnegie Museum of Art acquired Harris’s archive when she realised his photographs were pieces of art themselves. Called to help identify the people in his images, Foggie-Barnett saw the whole of Harris’s collection in a new light – the portraits and reportage mixed among images of everyday life creating sheer delight. In time, she became Community Archivist of the Charles ​“Teenie” Harris Archive at the museum. 

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Now Foggie-Barnett teams up with co-curator Dan Leers for the recent exhibition and new book, Black Photojournalism, which brings together the work of 57 artists including Anthony Barboza, Ming Smith, Adger Cowans, Coreen Simpson, and Deborah Willis. Organised chronologically, Black Photojournalism spans the mid-20^th century, beginning at the end of World War II, through the Civil Rights Movement, and closes with Reverend Jesse Jackson’s historic 1984 Presidential campaign. 

Black Photojournalism distils iconic moments and revisits them with fresh eyes, a vital reminder that history is ours to write. Foggie-Barnett points to one of her favourite photographs by Irving A. Williamson Sr., featuring a Black woman at the 1963 March on Washington, her smile as bright as the legion of medals that adorn her uniform. It is only on closer inspection that we learn this heroine is none other than the legendary performer and resistance leader, Josephine Baker. 

Every photograph is a discovery of subject, artist, and publisher, woven into a majestic tapestry of Black history. ​“We wanted to highlight the work of women who were photographers but also ran newspapers, like the Baltimore Afro American, now in its fifth generation of women ownership,” Foggie-Barnett says. ​“In a lot of cases, people behind the scenes were wearing many hats as editors, reporters, and photographers. We also wanted to talk about major publications like Ebony and Jet, as well as Muhammad Speaks, the official newspaper of the Nation of Islam.” 

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Now 68, Foggie-Barnett remembers reading these stories as news, rather than history, and sought to recreate elements of that experience in the exhibition. Images appear in slide shows, newspapers on poles, and microfiche machines, capturing the spirit of a bygone era liberated from the nostalgia industry complex. Rather, Black Photojournalism is a celebration of the DIY ethos that has empowered Black Americans to document and preserve their lives, freed from the relentless surveillance of the white gaze. 

Pointing to Chester Higgins Jr.​‘s 1972 photograph of a father and son playing in a Brooklyn park with the World Trade Center barely visible through the fog, Foggie Barnett distils transcendent power of photography in a single image. ​“To see this moment of Black joy goes against the stereotype that the Black man is absent from the family,” she says. ​“It’s the perfect image, the juxtaposition of innocence and love, as opposed to the towers [later] coming down. To me that’s the real essence of photojournalism: it can change and enhance through the life of the photograph.” 

Black Photojournalism, 1945 – 1984 is edited by Charlene Foggie-Barnett and Dan Leers, and published by Carnegie Museum of Art.

Miss Rosen is a freelance arts and photography writer, follow her on X.

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