Exhibition dates: 2nd October 2011 – 4th March 2012

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Detroit
1943
Gelatin silver print
Overall (sheet, trimmed to image): 8.3 x 11cm (3 1/4 x 4 5/16 in)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of the Callahan Family
© Estate of Harry Callahan, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York
For me, the early photographs of his wife Eleanor and Eleanor with their child Barbara and the most poignant, intimate and beautiful of Callahan’s work while the later modernist Cape Cod photographs presage the spirit and aesthetics of the New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape of 1975. Mario Cutajar observes
“These pictures of strangely vacant, light haunted intersections of sky, land, and ocean are confrontations with the limits of both the ego and photography itself as the ego’s instrument. They are oriented toward death rather than life, intimating in a cold, unsentimental way passage to another world or, perhaps, the engulfing oblivion at the horizon.”
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the National Gallery of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Chicago
1950
Gelatin silver print
Sheet (trimmed to image): 19 x 24.2 cm (7 1/2 x 9 1/2 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
© Estate of Harry Callahan, Collection of Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Eleanor, Chicago
1952
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington
© Estate of Harry Callahan, Collection of Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Ivy Tentacles on Glass, Chicago
c. 1952
Gelatin silver print
Image (can’t tell sheet size due to matting): 19.21 x 24.13cm (7 9/16 x 9 1/2 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of Susan and Peter MacGill
© Estate of Harry Callahan, Collection of Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Eleanor and Barbara, Chicago
1953
Gelatin silver print
Overall (image): 19.5 x 24.45cm (7 11/16 x 9 5/8 in)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Promised Gift of Susan and Peter MacGill
© Estate of Harry Callahan, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Cape Cod
1972
Gelatin silver print
Overall (image): 23.7 x 23.9cm (9 5/16 x 9 7/16 in)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of Joyce and Robert Menschel
© Estate of Harry Callahan, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Cape Cod
1974
Gelatin silver print
Overall (image): 21.8 x 22.6cm (8 9/16 x 8 7/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of Joyce and Robert Menschel
© Estate of Harry Callahan, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Ansley Park, Atlanta
1992
Gelatin silver print
Overall (image): 15.72 x 15.72cm (6 3/16 x 6 3/16 in)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of Susan and Peter MacGill
© Estate of Harry Callahan, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York
The year 2012 marks the centenary of the birth of Harry Callahan (1912-1999), whose highly experimental, visually daring, and elegant photographs made him one of the most innovative artists of the 20th century.
On view in the West Building of the National Gallery of Art from October 2, 2011, through March 4, 2012, Harry Callahan at 100 explores all facets of his work in some 100 photographs, from its genesis in the early 1940s Detroit to its flowering in Chicago in the late 1940s and 1950s, and finally to its maturation in Providence and Atlanta from the 1960s through the 1990s. In 1996, the Gallery organised the exhibition Harry Callahan, which traveled to Philadelphia, Atlanta, Detroit, and Chicago, and included numerous works on loan from the artist.
“Using the rich holdings of the Gallery’s own collection of Callahan’s work, as well as a large collection of photographs on long-term loan from the artist’s widow, the exhibition will reveal the remarkable consistency of his vision and will demonstrate how his strong, inventive formal language repeatedly enriched his art,” said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art.
The Exhibition
Organised thematically and chronologically, Harry Callahan at 100 examines Callahan’s work in relation to the places where he lived and to his family, unveiling his unparalleled devotion to both his subjects and the medium of photography.
In his earliest photographs made in and around Detroit, Callahan explored the limits of the camera, constructing photographs of multiple exposures in both black-and-white and colour. In works such as Twig in Snow (c. 1942) and Store Front and Reflections (c. 1943), he sought to capture simultaneously the simplicity and complexity of nature and the theatre of urban life.
Callahan continued his aesthetic and technical experiments through photographs of his wife, Eleanor. His nudes play with dramatic contrasts of light and dark: his layered multiple exposures reveal Eleanor’s body against landscapes and frosted glass windows (Eleanor, Chicago, 1948). His photographs of his wife and their daughter, Barbara, in the lake, the city, and the woods (Eleanor and Barbara, Lake Michigan, c. 1953) exploit the spontaneity and intimacy of snapshots – yet, paradoxically, were made with a large, cumbersome 8- x 10-inch view camera.
Callahan’s twin interests in the city and the land expanded during his years in Chicago and Providence, where he created both spare and evocative photographs of the natural landscape and complex compositions of urban architecture and pedestrians. He began to document anonymous women on the streets of Chicago, first in close shots of squinting eyes, open mouths, and downcast faces seen in Chicago (1950), then in full-figure shots from a low angle that feature the women against backgrounds of skyscrapers and flagpoles, as in Chicago (1961).
In the 1970s Callahan returned to colour photography, continuing to push the boundaries of the medium, seen in the well-known Providence (1977). Taken in Atlanta and during travels abroad, his late photographs emphasised vibrant colours, long shadows, and the complex humanity of urban life, seen in Morocco (1981) and Atlanta (1985).
Harry Callahan (1912-1999)
Born in Detroit in 1912, Callahan began to photograph in 1938. Although he received no formal training in the medium, his exceptional talent was immediately recognised. In 1946 László Moholy-Nagy hired him to teach at the Institute of Design in Chicago. There and at the Rhode Island School of Design (he moved to Providence in 1961) he taught generations of younger photographers, inspiring them both with the creativity of his vision and his steadfast commitment to the medium. In a career that spanned nearly six decades, he repeatedly explored a few select themes – his wife Eleanor and daughter Barbara, nature, and the urban environment. Yet each time he returned to a familiar subject, he reinvented it, endowing each photograph with both a personal and symbolic significance.
Press release from the National Gallery of Art website

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Eleanor, New York
1945
Gelatin silver print
Overall (image): 21.2 x 16.83cm (8 3/8 x 6 5/8 in)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of the Callahan Family
© Estate of Harry Callahan, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Eleanor
Chicago, 1947
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington
The Herbert and Nannette Rothschild Memorial Fund in memory of Judith Rothschild
© Estate of Harry Callahan, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Eleanor, Chicago
1948
Gelatin silver print
Overall (image): 11.59 x 8.5cm (4 9/16 x 3 3/8 in)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
The Joyce and Robert Menschel Fund
© Estate of Harry Callahan, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York
During the 1940s and ’50s, Callahan’s work was deeply affected by the resolutely humanizing presence of his wife, Eleanor, and daughter, Barbara. Frequent subjects, though consistently inscrutable, Eleanor and Barbara are the shadow puppets of his career, a direct testament to his family life, but always seen as if behind some kind of veil or scrim. They are markers of an intimacy that Callahan never violates by direct exposure.
Eleanor, in particular, is photographed down to the very last details of anatomy. She remembers that during these years, she might be cooking or cleaning, and suddenly Harry would announce: “‘Take off your clothes.’ And that would be that.”
The results are sometimes staggering. A 1947 image of what appears to be the lines created by Eleanor’s legs and buttocks looks like a Cycladic statue, relentlessly rectilinear but soft around the edges, freakishly modern and ancient at the same time. An 1953 image of Eleanor and Barbara bathing in Lake Michigan dissolves the horizon, fusing lake and sky into a field of shimmering gray. The two figures seem suspended in space, dematerialized, like characters in a dream.
It’s a small miracle that no matter how much Callahan’s camera dissects the world, the photographs never seem clinical. He divorces things from context, pulls out small vignettes from the larger city, but without violence, and without the gamesmanship of a photographer inclined to the cheap surreal.
Philip Kennicott. “Review: Harry Callahan photography exhibit at the National Gallery of Art,” on The Washington Post website October 4, 2011 [Online] Cited 22/02/2012

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Eleanor, Chicago
c. 1947
Gelatin silver print
Overall (sheet, trimmed to image): 11.91 x 8.6cm (4 11/16 x 3 3/8 in)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Promised Gift of Susan and Peter MacGill
© Estate of Harry Callahan, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Chicago
1961
Gelatin silver print
Overall (image): 40.6 x 27.1cm (16 x 10 11/16 in)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of the Callahan Family
© Estate of Harry Callahan, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Store Window with Mannequin with Lingerie, Providence
1962
Dye imbibition print
22.4 x 34.1cm (8 13/16 x 13 7/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of Mary and Dan Solomon and Patrons’ Permanent Fund
© Estate of Harry Callahan, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Kansas City
1981
Dye imbibition print
Overall (image): 24.3 x 36.7cm (9 9/16 x 14 7/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of The Very Reverend and Mrs. Charles U. Harris
© Estate of Harry Callahan, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Morocco
1981
Dye imbibition print
Overall (image): 24.2 x 36.7cm (9 1/2 x 14 7/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of the Collectors Committee
© Estate of Harry Callahan, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Atlanta
1985
Dye imbibition print
Overall (image): 24.4 x 36.7cm (9 5/8 x 14 7/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of the Callahan Family
© Estate of Harry Callahan, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York
National Gallery of Art
National Mall between 3rd and 7th Streets
Constitution Avenue NW, Washington
Opening hours:
Daily 10.00am – 5.00pm
National Gallery of Art website
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