Does an old photo show Vice President Kamala Harris practicing prostitution? No, that's not true: The professional photographer who took this shot in New York City told Lead Stories that the young Black woman in the picture was not Harris. Also, news reports with photos of Harris in the 1980s showed that she did not resemble the woman in the New York City photo.
The claim appeared in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, on July 8, 2024 (archived here). Its caption read:
🚨BOMBSHELL FOOTAGE LEAKED OF KAMALA HARRIS AS PROSTITUTE ⚠️ SHARE THIS VIDEO QUICKLY BEFORE THEY COPYRIGHT STRIKE IT:
The black-and-white image below the caption displayed a young Black woman and a young white woman in short, tight outfits. A red circle surrounded the Black woman's head. Below the image is white text in the bottom left corner of the photo that read:
LEAKED FOOTAGE OF KAMALA HARRIS AS PROSTITUTE ⚠️
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu July 25 17:24:30 2024 UTC)
A Google reverse image search (archived here) revealed a May 7, 2019, The Standard article titled, "Former cabbie Matt Weber shares raw photos of 1980s New York City in new book." An unedited version of the image of the two women appears in a slideshow.
The photo is attributed to Matt Weber, described in the article as a former New York taxi driver who became a professional street photographer. Weber's original photo of the young woman appears on his website under the title "For Sale 1989."
In this unedited version, the Black woman is standing on the right next to a car, with no red circle around her head, and the white woman is standing on the left in front of a man. The Black woman's face is mostly covered by her curly, thick hair, making her face unrecognizable.
Weber confirmed to Lead Stories in a July 26, 2024, email that the claim on X was false:
Definitely not Kamala. I didn't take any photos with the black woman's face viewable ...
Lead Stories also searched, using keywords, on Google News, and found no credible reporting to corroborate the claim.
That search can be seen here (archived here).
Harris wore her hair in a short haircut that did not cover her face throughout the 1980s. She wasn't living in or enrolled in any colleges or universities in New York City at the time this photo was taken.
Images of Harris in 1989 with a short hairstyle that reveals her face -- not at all similar to the woman in the Weber photo -- are displayed in an August 18, 2021, Politico Magazine article titled, "What Kamala Harris' Law School Years Reveal About Her Politics." She is seen graduating from the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.
A January 19, 2021, British Broadcasting Corporation News article titled "Kamala Harris and a 1986 Snapshot of that Howard generation" also displayed images of Harris in 1986 with a short haircut. She was attending Howard University, in Washington, D.C.
When this fact check was written, Logically Facts had reviewed the same claim.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks that mention Vice President Kamala Harris can be read here.
