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| Eleanor and Barbara Chicago, 1953 |
Harry Callahan
(1912 - 1999)
ONE ONE OF THE MOST
INFLUENTIAL TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHERS
Born in Detroit, Michigan, he began teaching himself photography in 1938. A talk given by Ansel Adams in 1941 inspired him to take his work seriously. In 1946 he was invited to teach photography at the Institute of Design in Chicago by Lásló Moholy-Nagy. He moved to Rhode Island in 1961 to establish a photography program at the Rhode Island School of Design, teaching there until his retirement in 1977.
Callahan left almost no written records—no diaries, letters, scrapbooks or teaching notes. His technical photographic method was to go out almost every morning, walk the city he lived in and take numerous pictures. He then spent almost every afternoon making proof prints of that day's best negatives. Yet, for all his photographic activity, Callahan, at his own estimation, produced no more than half a dozen final images a year.
He photographed his wife, Eleanor, and daughter, Barbara, and the streets, scenes and buildings of cities where he lived, showing a strong sense of line and form, and light and darkness. He also worked with multiple exposures. Callahan's work was a deeply personal response to his own life. He encouraged his students to turn their cameras on their own lives, leading by example. Callahan photographed his wife over a period of fifteen years, as his prime subject. Eleanor was essential to his art from 1947 to 1960. He photographed her everywhere - at home, in the city streets, in the landscape; alone, with their daughter, in black and white and in color, nude and clothed, distant and close.
