©L. Kasimu Harris, Inside Black Bars for the Zulu second-line

“Love is the key that takes cultures from oppression to joy. As a political unifier, the contract—love—takes on a liberating force,” artist Sabelo Mlangeni

The work of L. Kasimu Harris was recently celebrated in the Museum of Modern Art’s New Photography Initiative in the exhibition, New Photography 2025: Lines of Belonging. The photographs come from his deeply considered project, Vanishing Black Bars & Lounges, where he documents Black culture in New Orleans.

MOMA shares:

Marking the 40th anniversary of New Photography, this exhibition brings together 13 artists and collectives who explore sites of belonging and forms of interconnectedness. Some of the artists weave personal stories within broader political histories to explore intergenerational memory. Others reimagine the idea of the archive to disrupt narratives of the past and imagine future communities.

Lines of Belonging highlights artists working in four cities that have existed as centers of life, creativity, and communion for longer than the nation states in which they are presently situated. From Kathmandu to New Orleans, Johannesburg to Mexico City, these creative practitioners offer slowness, persistence, and care as an antidote to the viral, profit-driven speed of contemporary image consumption, metadata technologies, and artificial intelligence.

Presenting their work at MoMA for the first time, the artists and collectives include Sandra Blow, Tania Franco Klein, and Lake Verea (Francisca Rivero-Lake and Carla Verea), who live and work in Mexico City; Gabrielle Goliath, Lebohang Kganye, Sabelo Mlangeni, and Lindokuhle Sobekwa, who live and work in Johannesburg; Nepal Picture Library, Sheelasha Rajbhandari, and Prasiit Sthapit, who live and work in Kathmandu; and L. Kasimu Harris, Renee Royale, and Gabrielle Garcia Steib, who live and work in New Orleans.

Organized by Lucy Gallun, Curator; Roxana Marcoci, Acting Chief Curator and The David Dechman Senior Curator; Oluremi C. Onabanjo, The Peter Schub Curator; and Caitlin Ryan, Assistant Curator, Department of Photography.

L. Kasimu Harris has become the first Black, New Orleans–based photographer to have work added to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

©L Kasimu Harris, MoMA Install

©L Kasimu Harris, MoMA Install

©L Kasimu Harris, MoMA Install

Vanishing Black Bars & Lounges

The Black Bar in New Orleans is the epicenter of Black culture, which is the driving force of New Orleans culture. Black bars and lounges are the homes to social aid & pleasure clubs, Black Masking Indians, and the community. Historically it was and remains a respite from the rest of the world and the unfair treatment folk faced in areas outside of their neighborhoods. There are records of Black gathering spaces in New Orleans that date back to the late 1800s, with music, dancing, and drinking. It is where practice, play, and performance intersect throughout the year, most notably during the carnival season in the city.

These bars became a safe space, where patrons could buy affordable drinks, eat, listen to music, and fraternize. If they were in the Mississippi Delta, we’d call it a juke joint and in South Africa, it’s a shebeen, regardless of what it’s called and where it is, their importance to the culture and community is too often overlooked. But now, the Black bars in Black communities are turning white.

 The shifts made me think of the work of photographer Birney Imes’ “Juke Joint.” From 1983 to ‘89, Imes took his camera around the Mississippi Delta and documented bars in the black parts of town. He took the viewer inside to experience the cracked walls, scribbled signs, games at the pool table, and lots of Budweiser. Decades ago, Imes knew those Juke Joints, so omnipresent and region-defining, had a tepid existence. Now, the number of juke joints languishes in the single digits.  It made me think of the Black neighborhood bars of New Orleans. I wanted to capture them before they were unrecognizable.

Since 2018, I’ve documented these spaces using my camera and doing interviews. But most importantly, I bear witness to the Black genius that percolates from these watering holes.

©L. Kasimu Harris, Originally Named Joe’s Sandpiper Lounge, it is a venerable waterhole that has been in existence about 60 years. His nephew renamed it Benny’s Sandpiper Lounge and has run it for 30 years. The neon sign was placed on the building for a scene in Ray, the 2004 biopic about Ray Charles. Baby Let Me Hold Your Hand is the song Jamie Foxx (Charles) performing during the scene at the Sandpiper Lounge “Baby Let Me Hold Your Hand,” 2019

L. Kasimu Harris shares:

My artistic practice is rooted in “Truth, By Any Means Necessary,” a visual beacon light that deploys several approaches to arrive at verities. It is a constant striving to amplify fundamental inequities and injustices of Black people, as well as illuminating the Black pool of genius from the same disenfranchised community. 

The crux of my approach as a visual communicator was developed in print journalism, fact-driven, and the quest for truth remains paramount to all facets of my storytelling. However, art has allowed me the freedom to explore, examine, and recreate factual events or issues that are not permissible in the news. 

 That strategy is best reflected in my constructed realities, where I examine social justice issues in the African-American community. They are a means for visual and psychological studies to examine racial disparities and the imbalance that pervades class, education, and neighborhoods. From Reconstruction to now, a social climate persists, where the ascension of blacks into the upper rungs of leadership is as common as the assassination of blacks on the street, disguised as law enforcement. I strive to uncover the warring ideals of progress and sameness using “man against man,” and “man against self” and “man against society.”

©L Kasimu Harris, Zell’s Corner

And in New Orleans, and beyond, with the foreboding presence of gentrification, there’s also “man against culture.” The Black Bar in New Orleans is the epicenter of Black culture in New Orleans, which is the driving force of New Orleans culture. Black bars and lounges are the homes to social aid & pleasure clubs, Black Masking Indians, and the community. Historically it was and remains a respite from the rest of the world and the unfair treatment folk faced in areas outside of their neighborhoods. There are records of Black gathering spaces in New Orleans that date back to the late 1800s, with music, dancing, and drinking. This series is titled, Vanishing Black Bars & Lounges (2018-present.)

These bars became a safe space, where patrons could buy affordable drinks, eat, listen to music and fraternize. If they were in the Mississippi Delta, we’d call it a Jook Joint and in South Africa, it’s a shebeen, regardless of what it’s called and where it is, their importance to the culture and community are too often overlooked.

©L. Kasimu Harris, Marwan Pleasant, a Black Masking Indian from The Golden Eagles, inside of Sportsman Corner, a Black bar, on Carnival Day 2018. Sportsman’s Corner Bar, has been owned by the Elloie family since the 1960s, and is the epicenter from Black culture in Uptown New Orleans. “Come Tuesday” (Sportsman Corner)

I am telling the story of the present. Yet, in some images, now, the past, and future are visible at once. In some of these Black bars, the furnishings have remained unchanged for decades, while having modern amenities such as flat screen televisions, video poker machines, and Apple Pay. In other instances, it’s the clientele that denotes the passage of time. But most importantly, my work about making physical documents, for generations to come, that say we were here.

©L. Kasimu Harris, Deniseea Taylor, inside of her speakeasy, Good Trouble Lounge.

©L. Kasimu Harris, Precious, a bartender at the Purple Rain Bar. “Precious” 2019

©L. Kasimu Harris, Downtown Super Sunday on Bayou St. John.

©L. Kasimu Harris, Downtown Super Sunday on Bayou St. John.

©L. Kasimu Harris, Issac “Ike” Dixon, left, is the longtime proprietor of Purple Rain Bar. He owns three properties, including the bar and they’re currently listed on the real estate market. This bar is home to the Golden Blades Indians, who dress there on Mardi Day and St. Joseph’s Night. “The Monday Faithfuls” 2019

©L. Kasimu Harris, Champers 2024

©L. Kasimu Harris, Nero’s Vino 2024

L. Kasimu Harris is a New Orleans-based artist whose practice uses various strategic and conceptual devices 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, two international exhibitions, and 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 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. He was one of 51 artists selected globally for Prospect.6: The Future Is Present, The Harbinger Is Home, a city-wide triennial in New Orleans, November 2 to February 2, 2025. He debuted work from the series that explores Black bars & lounges from a national and international perspective. Harris is also one of 13 artists tapped for MoMA’s New Photography 2025: Lines of Belonging, and five of his photos were acquired by the museum for their permanent collection.

Harris has penned essays published in several 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 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 participated in the 2021 Atlanta Biennale, Of Care and Destruction.

Most recently, Harris was the still photographer for Nickel Boys, the Oscar-nominated 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.

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, and a 2025 Artist-in-Residence at Alma | Lewis in Pittsburgh.

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.

Permanent Collections

Museum of Modern Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, The Wedge Collection (Toronto), Center of Photography at Woodstock (New York), the NOVO Foundation (New York), Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, The Shops at the CAC (Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans), The Do Good Fund, and Crystal Bridges Museum of Art.

Instagram: @Visionsandverbs