They called him “One Shot,” because while other photographers were setting up to get multiple versions of the same picture, Charles “Teenie” Harris would take just one shot, and move on to the next photo.

The next photo, among the more than 80,000 negatives in the collection by the noted photographer, would be another one that chronicled the life of Pittsburgh’s Black community between 1936 and 1975.

Harris, whose nickname was shortened from “Teeny Little Lover,” would have celebrated his 100th birthday on July 2. He is considered the foremost photographer in the city’s history. Harris worked for 40 years as staff photographer for the Pittsburgh Courier. He said his first salary was $35 a week, but Teenie said he just loved to take pictures.

His contribution to the newspaper is legendary, but his contribution to the community has been immeasurable. Teenie captured the famous and the not-so famous.

His lens framed prominent politicians, prominent criminals and prominent ministers, while also focusing on children playing, gentlemen in their finest outfits, and, of course, the girls.

“Well, I—I like to see the girls,” he once told an interviewer. “I got a kick outta that. But they say I always took good-lookin’ girls, but I didn’t do that. I took all kind of girls.”

Teenie Harris was able to photograph a wide range of notable people from sports, music and politics on their visits to Pittsburgh. Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King Jr., Richard Nixon, and John F. Kennedy, along with Pittsburgh-born luminaries Billy Eckstine, George Benson and Ahmad Jamal, are just some of the celebrities photographed by Harris. In 2007, his work was designated a “We the People” project by the National Endowment for the Humanities. This initiative supports projects that explore significant events and themes in U.S. history and culture that advance knowledge of the principles that define the country.

Today, Teenie Harris’s images have been examined by thousands of people through projects such as “One Shot,” the Ron K. Brown/Evidence dance program inspired by the life of Harris and accompanied by “Rhapsody in Black and White: The Photographs of Charles ‘Teenie’ Harris,” an exhibition of his photographs. “One Shot” and “Rhapsody in Black and White”—organized by the August Wilson Center for African American Culture—are touring the United States and will have visited 15 different venues during the 2007-2008 seasons. Both works will be included as part of the Wilson Center’s inaugural season in its new facility in 2009. “LOOKING FORWARD: Images of Children by Charles ‘Teenie’ Harris” was also organized by the August Wilson Center in 2006.

Other exhibitions including images of Harris’s work are “Carryin’ On,” on view at the Andy Warhol Museum in 2007; “Soul Soldiers: African Americans and the Vietnam Conflict,” organized by the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania in 2006; and “Spirit of a Community: The Photographs of Charles ‘Teenie’ Harris,” organized by the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in 2001. In 1997, Carnegie Museum of Art included vintage prints in the “Pittsburgh Revealed” exhibition, and in 2003 and 2006, the museum invited the community to help identify the people, places and events in Harris’s photographs in “Documenting Our Past: The Teenie Harris Archive Projects I and II.” Harris’s photographs were the focus of “One Shot” Harris by noted author Stanley Crouch, and “One Shot: The Life and Times of ‘Teenie’ Harris,” a documentary of Harris’s life by filmmaker Kenneth Love.

“Teenie has left us with an unrivaled collection of images that document African-American and Pittsburgh history,” said Louise Lippincott, chief curator and curator of fine arts at Carnegie Museum of Art. “We’re happy to be able to provide the community access to Teenie’s body of work via the website and outreach, and that we can share Pittsburgh’s vitality and historical significance to the world beyond our three rivers.”

“What a valuable work Mr. Harris created and what valuable work (Carnegie Museum of Art is) continuing by archiving and allowing the use of his images,” said Chris Moore of WQED-TV. WQED-TV has used Harris’s images for “Barbershops: Pittsburgh Stylin’,” 2003; “Torchbearers,” 2006; and “Jim Crow Pennsylvania,” 2007; a continuing series of programs focused on the Black experience in Pennsylvania.

In celebration of Harris’s 100th birthday, the August Wilson Center for African American Culture will display a portion of the Harris photograph collection at Gallery 209/9 from July 2-12. The photographs on display will be from “LOOKING FORWARD and Rhapsody in Black and White.”

It is all remarkable for a young man who chose photography over working for his brother, then a well-known numbers man. His brother bankrolled his first studio, while warning him that he couldn’t make money taking pictures.

What Teenie made was history, and an enduring slice of Pittsburgh that may never be duplicated.