L. Kasimu Harris is a New Orleans-based artist whose practice deposits a number of different strategic and conceptual devices in order to push narratives. He strives to tell stories of underrepresented communities in New Orleans and beyond. Harris has shown in numerous group exhibitions across the US and two international exhibitions and has had eight solo photography exhibitions.
His series, Vanishing Black Bars & Lounges, (2018 - present) has been featured in solo exhibitions at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and at the Hilliard Art Museum in Lafayette, Louisiana. Harris’s writing and/or photography on the series has been included in several publications, including Wildsam Field Guides: New Orleans: 2nd Edition, Stranger’s Guide and most notably for “A Shot Before Last Call: Capturing New Orleans’s Vanishing Black Bars” in The New York Times. Harris has penned essays published in a number of books including Best Food Writing 2016, New Southern Photography: Images of the Twenty-First Century American South, and he was the photo essayist for the Prospect. 5 Catalogue, Yesterday we said tomorrow.
Harris’s War on the Benighted series was a part of Changing Course: Reflections on New Orleans Histories, a group exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art, in 2018. He was among 60 artists selected nationwide for State of the Art 2020 at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and was in the 2021 Atlanta Biennale, Of Care and Destruction.
Most recently, Harris was the unit still photographer for Nickel Boys, a movie directed by RaMell Ross and based on the Colson Whitehead novel. Harris earned a BBA in Entrepreneurship from Middle Tennessee State University and an MA in Journalism from the University of Mississippi. He is on the Board of Trustees at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and is a member of the Antenna Gallery Collective. Notable Harris was selected as a 2018 Artist-in-Residence at the Center for Photography at Woodstock and a 2020 Joan Mitchell Center Artist-in-Residence.
Harris was named one of 8 “Louisianians of the Year” for 2017 by Louisiana Life magazine. 2022 Documentary Photographer of the Year by Louisiana Endowment of the Humanities.
