Celebrating AP Photographer Harry Harris
Harry Harris was born on March 25, 1913 in New York City. He left school to work for a printing company, joined AP at age 15 as a messenger and was hired as a staff photographer in 1934 when photography was still a new medium for news.
Entirely self-taught on the Speed Graphic, Harris quickly distinguished himself for both persistence and style. In 1944, his two brothers already drafted, he volunteered as a photographer in the Signal Corps. On the evening of June 6, 1944, he crossed into France with the U.S. First Army and over the ensuing weeks documented the Battle of Normandy and the liberation of Paris. After the war, he followed Senator John F. Kennedy’s political rise, the Kennedy family, and the president’s death and funeral. He photographed Babe Ruth’s retirement and went on to capture two record-breaking home runs that eclipsed Babe Ruth’s seasonal record (Roger Maris in 1961) and his career record (Hank Aaron in 1974). Harris retired in 1978 and died on Feb. 13, 2002 at age 88.
During his 50-year career, Harris used virtually every camera format until the advent of digital, including the 4 x 5 Speed Graphic, Yashica Mat, Mamiyaflex, Rolleiflex, Hasselblad, Hulcher and the 35 mm Nikons, manual and motorized. Here we offer a selection of Harris’ photography supplemented by excerpts from his 1997 oral history interview with retired head of photos, Hal Buell.
The cruise liner SS Morro Castle catches fire, Sept. 8, 1934
Harry Harris to Hal Buell:
The ship Morro Castle returning from Cuba on a cruise caught fire off the Jersey coast. Question was asked can I make air pictures. Well, being a young photographer I could do anything. I wasn't going to say no. So chartered a plane. Found it about seven, eight miles offshore. Then we had a slight problem coming back. The engine started to miss. The pilot said gee I just worked on the engine. I thought it was all right. Can you swim? I says yeah I can swim. I said well no. But fortunately he spotted an airstrip. We come down there. Cracked up the plane. Called the office. Are you all right? Yeah, I'm all right. They says well I want you to meet Joe Caneva. He's down near Asbury Park. The ship is drifting there. Go down there. So that was my first assignment there, the Morro Castle.
With the U.S. First Army in Normandy, June--August 1944
Harry Harris to Hal Buell:
So for days we were stuck outside of Saint-Lo. So finally it looked like an opening. So I walked up into the town. Nothing is going on except some of our soldiers are in a house, some of them in a shell hole, this and that. I'm walking and I come across this one spot and there's a flag on a church ruins. And I ask the two soldiers in the shell... I said what's the flag doing up there? That was our commanding officer. He said he'd lead the troops into Saint Lo. We'll be the first ones to take it. He was killed. We carried his body here into the church and we put it on the ruins here.
On the fields of play
Harry Harris to Hal Buell:
Well, thirty-five enabled you to select a given lens for a given subject. Like you wouldn't use a two-hundred-millimeter at a fight, see. But you could use different lenses for different occasions for different subjects. Then when they were motorized and they began to get more reliable, you could shoot five, six frames a second. Where with single-shot there when we used graphics, you'd have to shoot the shot, put the slide in, turn the holder over to the second shot, pull your slide, then make your picture. That's the way you covered fights, that's the way you covered ballgames. And ballgames you had a magazine with set that was twelve sheets of five-seven film. You'd have to pull it out, remove the slide, put it back in, and then set your shutter again. Then when the motorized thirty-five came along, all of a sudden you're shooting with thirty-six exposures, four to five frames a second. A whole new world of photography. Except we went along with the Hulcher camera. That could shoot up to fifty frames a second, a hundred feet of film, and there it was, seventy millimeters and we were able to use that. Different focal length lenses.
New York, New York
Harry Harris to Hal Buell:
People ask the same question many times. Many times. Do you really get paid to go to these ballgames and World Series and all? They pay you to go? And just the thought of it, I... You never think of it while you're working. But as you look back, you have a ticket to the world. You go anywhere and do anything and on top of that, why, if you happen to come off with a good run of pictures there, you have a satisfaction that you can't get any other way. It's just a great way of life.
Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio, March 29, 1961
Harry Harris to Hal Buell:
He says Harry, would you like to make a picture of Miss Monroe and myself? That's what he called her. I said sure. Says where do you want to make it. I says you name the place, the time. I'll meet you anytime, ten o'clock, midnight, two in the morning. So there he and she, quiet place on the beach. She shows up. You would never recognize her. She had a kerchief on her head. Sunglasses. Floppy pants. Floppy shirt. You wouldn't know who she was. Miss Monroe, you mind removing the sunglasses? It would help the picture. No. I says well I'd sure appreciate it. Would help a lot. No. She says who's that sitting in your car? Your girlfriend? If you ask her to remove sunglasses for a picture would she do it? I says that's my dear wife. She would say no too. She says well neither would I. I said I couldn't win for a moment there.
Hoping for a group picture, Harry Harris gestures to three of the candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles on July 13, 1960. Former Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson, center, and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson, right, had announced their candidacies one week earlier. On July 14, Stevenson finished fourth in the balloting while Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kennedy, left, won the nomination on the first ballot with 806 delegate votes. Johnson received 409 delegate votes. (AP Photo)
President John F. Kennedy Lying in State in the Capitol Rotunda, Nov. 24, 1963
Harry Harris to Hal Buell:
But behind the platform there's a statue of Lincoln. I kept looking at it. There's Kennedy's coffin there and there's... How do you put it together? So I figured the two-hundred-millimeter lens'd do it. So I make a picture and the special turns around, he says no pictures are allowed, get out. I says yes sir. I come back. It was underexposed. I knew it would be. When I came up with the crowd up to the special, he hears a click and he turns around and he says didn't I put you out of here? So I come back and Cattrall had mixed up some almost straight developer, some dynamite, and could just about able to make a print of this. And in the foreground, there's Kennedy's coffin. And Lincoln there with his hand over it.
Photography by Harry Harris
Text by Valerie Komor
With grateful thanks to Chuck Zoeller, Hal Buell and Jonathan Elderfield