THE KEVIN HARRIS COLLECTION
PEOPLE • REPRESENTATION • PLACE
African American vernacular photography, authored photographic archives, and public art.
A COLLECTION OF IMAGES, HISTORIES, AND LIVED EXPERIENCE
The Kevin Harris Collection brings together historical African American vernacular photography and more than five decades of Kevin Harris’s own photographic work. Across collected images, authored archives, and public art, the work considers how people present themselves, inhabit place, and participate in determining how they are seen.
THE KEVIN HARRIS COLLECTION
African American Vernacular Photography, c. 1870–1970
The collection spans approximately a century of African American photographic practice, from nineteenth-century tintypes and works on paper to neighborhood commercial studios, arcade photographs, and photo booth portraits. Together, these images preserve a record of self-presentation, family and social relationships, dress, performance, aspiration, leisure, and community life.
Hand-colored studio portrait, c. 1940s
Kevin Harris Collection
THE KEVIN HARRIS PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVE
Chicago • Travel • Domestic Life • Public Space
The Alley / Universal Alley, Chicago, 1970–1976
Photograph by Kevin Harris
SELECTED BODIES OF WORK
THE ALLEY / UNIVERSAL ALLEY
Chicago, 1970–1976
A six-year photographic study of a South Side Chicago gathering place where music, community, and photography converged. Each month, photographs made at the Alley were displayed on its walls, returning the images to the people who inhabited the space.
The Alley / Universal Alley, Chicago, 1970–1976
16mm film by Kevin Harris. Originally silent; soundtrack by Jimmy Ellis added later.
TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHS
Europe • North Africa • Middle East • South Asia, 1973–1982
Photographs made during nearly a decade of travel across Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, documenting encounters with people, places, and everyday life along the way.
MUSEUM OF PUBLIC ART
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Founded by Kevin Harris, the Museum of Public Art brought artists from around the world, and communities together through large-scale public murals. Many works began with photographs of neighborhood residents, transforming individual portraits into images embedded in the public landscape.
Community portrait translated from photograph to monumental mural by Jimmy C.
Museum of Public Art, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
IF THE WALLS COULD TALK
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
A photographic study of houses in urgent need of repair and the people who continue to call them home. Created from more than one hundred 360-degree panoramic photographs, the project considers home, dignity, memory, and the unequal burden of preserving place.
Interior portrait, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
From If the Walls Could Talk.
THE KEVIN HARRIS COLLECTION
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