Harry Callahan describes his life before photography as being ‘nothing very spectacular’. While working as a clerk for Chrysler 1938, Callahan joined their amateur camera club. Two years later he attended a workshop given by Ansel Adams and decided to pursue photography seriously (Mavlian 2013).
Callahan grouped his work is into three themes which he described in 1975 as ‘Nature, Buildings and People’. His wife Eleanor became his most photographed subjects, and the point where his three themes merge. “She appears nude, clothed, in close-up, in silhouette, with their daughter Barbara inside their home or outdoors dwarfed by the towering urban landscape, a lone figure in the distance on a beach or emerging from the water. These images show his dedication to the subject of the female form, but perhaps more importantly portray their relationship and the central role Eleanor had in his life” (Mavlian 2013).
Callahan was constantly experimenting and he viewed photography as “an adventure just as life is an adventure” (Callahan). His ability to push the limits of the medium are often owed to his lack of a formal art education. Callahan “could shift outlooks to savour lyrical flashes of beauty in humble tuffs of grass, elegant lines drawn by utility wires against the sky, or the graceful features of his wife’s form” (Warner Marien 2010).
Reference
Artsy (2018) About Harry Callahan [online], available: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/harry-callahan-eleanor [accessed 30 Jan 2018].
Cassidy, V.M. (n.d.) ‘Harry Callahan: The Photographer at Work’, LensCulture [online], available: https://www.lensculture.com/articles/harry-callahan-harry-callahan-the-photographer-at-work [accessed 12 Jan 2018].
Clarke, G. (1997) The Photograph, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jeffrey, I. (2010) Photography A Concise History, London: Thames & Hudson Ltd.
Mavlian, S. (2013) ‘Nature, Buildings and People’, Tate Etc., 29 Autumn, available: http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/nature-buildings-and-people [accessed 30 Jan 2018].
Tate (2018) Harry Callahan [online], available: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/display/harry-callahan [accessed 30 Jan 2018].
Warner Marien, M. (2010) Photography: A Cultural History, 3rd ed., London: Laurence King.
Identity Place Photos 