?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,500
CHARLES "TEENIE" HARRIS (1908-1998)
A rare group of 41 photographs documenting Black queer nightlife in Pittsburgh, including cross dressers and nightclub performers. A rare and compelling archive with 20 vintage prints and 21 modern prints, featuring a glimpse into the nightlife of Pittsburgh's Hill District. Many of the images feature Harris' documentation of queer life, cross dressers, and nightclub performers, including figures in costumes, posed in groups, and on stage. The set features some known figures, including the drag performers Gilda and "Junie" Turner in costume, boxer Michael "Bronze Adonis" Phelan (Fields), and the jazz band at the Little Paris Club. Silver prints, the vintage images (20) measuring approximately 111x162 mm; 4⅜x6⅜ inches, and the reverse, the sheets slightly larger; accompanied by a signed receipt from Harris; these in a binder labeled Little Paris Nite Club Review. The modern prints (21): 6 measuring 254x203 mm; 10x8 inches, 10 measuring 356x279 mm; 14x11 inches, 6 measuring 508x406 mm; 20x16 inches, and the reverse. Circa 1940-1965; 22 printed late 1980s or early 1990s.
Charles "Teenie" Harris was a prominent photo-journalist best-known for documenting Black life and culture in mid-20th-century Pittsburgh. During Harris' 40-year career with the Pittsburgh Courier (1935-1975), one of the country's most important Black newspapers, he produced an astonishing 80,000 images, now representing one of the largest single bodies of work documenting the Black experience. Harris also owned the Harris Studio in the Hill District for many years.
This series documents Black queer life in Pittsburgh's Hill District, a lesser-known subject of Harris', but one that reveals the trust Harris' subjects had in him. His scenes of queer and transgender aesthetic culture include the drag performers Gilda and "Junie" Turner in costume.
