Séan Alonzo Harris is a professional editorial, commercial and fine art photographer concentrating on narrative and environmental portraiture. Over the past 25 years, Séan’s work is featured in a range of national publications, advertising campaigns, and exhibitions. In these varied contexts, Séan’s work focuses on human experience and identity and examines how individuals visualize themselves and how they are portrayed. Séan’s images bear witness to often invisible or overlooked members of our communities, and creates portraits that provide a counter image and narrative of self-worth and personal agency.

His work is published in Atlantic Magazine, the Paris Review, Boston Magazine, Down East, Portland Magazine, Maine Home and Design, Photo District News Rising Star feature, Maine Magazine, Harvard University Magazine, Ralph Lauren magazine, Mother Jones, Adweek, Consumer Reports, Teaching Tolerance, and USA Today. 

Harris’ clients include Jackson Laboratory, J.P.Morgan Chase, Possible Health/ Nepal, Atlantic Rethink, Cathay Pacific Airways /Hong Kong, Coastal Enterprises Inc., Norway Savings Bank, Bangor Savings Bank,  LL Bean, York Community College, Maine College of Art, CDM Communications, Museum of African Culture, Standard Baking Company, The Cedars Retirement Community, Downeast Energy, Camp Sunshine, Colby College.

Harris has received critical acclaim for his fine artwork. Recently, Séan was awarded a Kindling Fund grant from Space Gallery and the Warhol Foundation, for his current project Visual Tensions. This collaborative photographic project and community dialog pairs people of color with members of law enforcement. Harris will create photographic portraits as a means to confront and question cultural and racial assumptions, stereotypes and fears. His work is also part of the celebrated traveling exhibition, Going Forward, Looking Back: Practicing Historical Processes in the 21st century. He has also developed three significant shows, VanDerZee On My Mind in 1999, featuring images of African Americans in Maine, sponsored by a grant from the Maine Humanities Council and The Families Of Maine Documentary Photography Project, starting with A Lebanese Family In Waterville, in 2003, and Recollection; Green Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, in 2005.

By 2003, the 121st Maine legislature had presented him with a formal proclamation of recognition for his work as a photographer. Harris’s work was included in 150 Years of Photography in Maine and selected for Biennial Juried Exhibition at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art and received honorable mention in 2000. His work was also part of the multi-media production If Wishes Were Horses, Beggars Would Ride at the Portland Museum of Art, featuring video, dance, text, and photography. Séan’s work was also included in the Griffin Museum of Photography’s Tenth Annual Exhibition. Harris’s work is included in the books Visible Black History, The First Chronicle of Its People and Portland Through the Lens.

Harris has also participated in several community-based collaborations, and artist in residencies in Maine Schools and youth programs. He has partnered with VSA Arts of Maine, The Edge Youth Program, Denmark Arts Center, Tim Rollins K.O.S. and Maine College of Art.