Harry Callahan

Callahan did somehow arrive quickly at the sure knowledge that the function of his own work was to describe not the public issues of the great world, but the interior shape of his private experience.
John Szarkowski

Harry Callahan (1912-1999) was born in Detroit, and began his career by joining the camera club at Chrysler Motors in 1938. He became one of the great innovators of twentieth-century American photography, and later taught at the Institute of Design in Chicago and then the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, where he founded and directed the Graduate Program in Photography. He is known, not only for landscapes but also for his dynamic urban views, portraits of his wife, Eleanor, and extensive color work. All of this was widely published and exhibited during his lifetime, and was the subject of a major retrospective at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., in the late 1990s. Previous monographs include The Photographer at Work, Elemental Landscapes, Callahan in New England, Early Street Photography 1943-1945, Color 1941-1980, and New Color Photographs 1978-1987.

MONOGRAPHS & CATALOGS

Harry Callahan Photographs by Harry Callahan. Photography is an adventure just as life is an adventure,” Harry Callahan has stated. If man wishes to express himself photographically, he must understand, surely to a certain extent, his relationship
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APERTURE
ISBN: 9780893818210
$12.50 | Not available

Elemental Landscapes: Photographs By Harry Callahan Essay by Katherine Ware. Foreword by Anne d'Harnoncourt. Elemental Landscapes accompanies an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art that concentrates exclusively on the landscape photographs of the late American photographer Harry Callahan. The natural landscape was a subject
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PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART
ISBN: 9780876331507
$20.00 | Not available

Harry Callahan

Harry Callahan

Masters of Photography Series

Photographs by Harry Callahan.
Published by Aperture

“Photography is an adventure just as life is an adventure,” Harry Callahan has stated. “If man wishes to express himself photographically, he must understand, surely to a certain extent, his relationship to life.” Looking then at this adventure, this remarkably clear and straightforward life, the pictures... tell the story of Harry Callahan is his work. And therein lies his legend. --Arno Rafael Minkkinen
Harry Callahan, known for his bold exploration of quotidian details and his innovative use of the abstract in photography, has created a career that spans many eras and lives. From his extended portrait of his wife, Eleanor, to formal studies of architectural structures and his observation of abstract expressionist line in natural forms, Callahan's work has been central to the development of American photography. His legacy endures in the vibrancy of his images and the inspiration his teaching has brought to many.

Elemental Landscapes: Photographs By Harry Callahan

Essay by Katherine Ware. Foreword by Anne d'Harnoncourt.
Published by Philadelphia Museum of Art

Elemental Landscapes accompanies an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art that concentrates exclusively on the landscape photographs of the late American photographer Harry Callahan. The natural landscape was a subject that occupied Callahan throughout his career, and examples range in time from the early 1940s to the early 1990s, providing an in-depth look at the artist's evolution. Callahan was fascinated not by the wide, sweeping landscapes of photographers like Ansel Adams but by more intimate pictures, which often remove the context of earth and sky from the scene, creating abstractions that challenge our notions of landscape by presenting a small slice of the world in all its infinite detail.