I'm a native Chicagoan and a born photographer, and have never wanted to be anything else. Funny thing is I've been a pro since the age of 13 when I was commissioned by various friends' parents to shoot portraits of their families. I had my first legitimate show at 17 and sold my first photographs to an ad agency at 18: race car photos for use in Pure Oil national ads shot through Leo Burnett.

I started Bart Harris Photography, Inc. at 23 and shot retail fashion for Both Marshall Field & Co. and Carson Pirie Scott & Co. as well as several small ad agencies.  Through the years I worked on many famous advertising campaigns such as Virginia Slims, Walter Payton’s Wheaties Box, Michael Jordan for Gatorade, Miller Light Beer’s sports celebrities (Dick Butkis, Marv Throneberry, Joe Frazier and more), John Madden’s Ace Hardware campaign, Spuds MacKenzie for Bud Light and many more.  Eleven years ago, I became the first “people photographer” in advertising to shoot 100% digitally. Shortly after this I began beta testing for Eastman Kodak and advising various advertising agencies about technical aspects of working with digital files.

In late 2003, I was hired by 20th Century Fox to produce digital images of Chicago that were initially to be used as guides for digitally constructed Chicago scenes. A number of those photographs became backgrounds in the feature film I Robot. These images led me to continue photographing Chicago and creating limited edition, fine-art photographic prints. I still pursue my advertising photography career and have created the first ever photographic comic strip (which can be seen on line in the Tribune’s sports section: http:chicagosports.com ). Please look for “Around The Corner”, my comic strip’s name.      Bart recently photographed featured artists for the Chicago Artists Month 2006 brochure and is pursuing publishing a book of his photographs of Chicago's artists.