Séan Alonzo Harris
Séan Alonzo Harris joins me on the Makers of the USA Behind The Lens Series. I stumbled upon Séan through Black Owned Maine and we collaborated on a photoshoot with Kazeem with Portland Trading Company. He established his career in commercial, fine art, and editorial photography in Maine, Boston, and New York.
"I asked for a tape recorder when I was seven years old, and I got a camera instead. I'm like, this is a tape recorder...my grandmother gave it to me and said you can record with that too. At the time, my parents had gotten divorced, and my parents were from DC and then we moved to Cambridge. The camera was a way for me to stay connected. I take photographs, I only use the camera when I went to DC. I never took photographs in Cambridge. I take all of these photographs and for some reason, I get back and I process them. I would put them up on the wall and kind of paginate them and map out my summer or holiday or whatever it was. So I was like creating this stuff. I just kept on doing and as time went on, I started to take more photographs. It was just something that clicked with me and then I saw some stuff in the darkroom and I was, mind blown. Then by the time I was nine years old, I had a Pentax K 1000. I just understood, it was something about it. I just could see." said Séan Alonzo Harris.
Séan currently lives in Maine but before venturing up north he attended the Art Institute of Boston, which now is the Lesley School of Art Design and he also had an incredible opportunity to intern with photographer John Hewitt.
"I ended up working with him and so my last semester in college... John was a little bit ruffled because I became part of his team. I went off, and I photo assist a lot. What I learned in grad school with photography, it all applied, and then put it into practice. So I did that for many years. I did that in New York City, to establish myself, and it took a really long time for me to establish myself, but I was always producing and creating work and, either personal projects, they call it commercial world, fine art that I've created over the years and got into a lot of shows. You know, grinding and just doing what I do waking up every morning, like, how can I attack this problem? You know, what's going on? Who can I get in front of? said Séan.
Hear more about Séan’s work, process, and how he ended up in Maine on this episode of Makers of Maine Behind The Lens.
See Séan’s work here: www.seanalonzoharris.com