American Art Collaborative

At first glance, this photograph by Harry Callahan presents a formidable challenge—if not a nearly impenetrable opacity. Though apparently artless, it is precisely its lack of pretension or cant that gives this enigmatic image its enduring strength. Given more attention, the photograph’s remarkable clarity and straight-on vantage point begin to disclose the photographer’s exceptional craft and acute visual intelligence. The modestly sized print (tiny when compared with the supersized photographs we see today) displays a delightful collection of details and range of tones that ultimately demand a thoughtful, up-close examination. In a visual culture in which a constant barrage of quick-read, easily digestible imagery is the norm, that alone might be considered a noteworthy event. But still, this finely rendered picture of a woman and small girl standing side by side on an empty cobblestone street remains a puzzle. It could be dismissed as an intriguing but otherwise ordinary family picture of little interest to the average viewer. The unusually great distance between the photographer and his subjects might even be assessed as the miscalculation of a photographer who simply didn’t know enough to move closer. But to take this image out of the context of the series to which it belongs would be akin to looking at a single Eugene Atget photograph and labeling it merely a nostalgic view of old Paris. Eleanor and Barbara, Chicago is part of a series Callahan made of his family in a variety of Chicago landscapes, such as city parks, industrial areas, and at Lake Michigan. In many, his subjects stare directly at the camera from a greater distance than is usually expected in a portrait. In this particular photograph, the mother and child punctuate the urban landscape as doll-like figures. While the duo’s diminutiveness could imply that they are inconsequential to the photographer and his photograph, the series in total reveals their vital importance to the artist, and thus places them—figuratively at least—front and center in these pictures. And then there’s the print itself, made by direct contact with the large film negative. This is no virtual photograph floating in the cyber-world as a conglomeration of approximated pixels. This is, after all, a print made by Callahan himself. The eight-by-ten-inch piece of gelatin-silver paper upon which the image is printed accommodates the negative neatly from edge to edge; no paper is wasted and no part of the original negative goes unrecorded. The print’s subtlety can be astonishing. In what at first seems to be a solid light gray sky, there appears a delicate whisper of white clouds toward the right side of the picture, so close in tone to the sky it disappears entirely in even some of the finest reproductions of this work. Like many artists, Callahan helped support his work by teaching. Although evidently a reluctant pedagogue, he was a powerful artist-as-teacher role model for his students, among them Emmet Gowin, now himself an important artist and university professor. Gowin’s noteworthy series of photographs of his wife, Edith, and her extended family is surely the legacy of his mentor’s influence. The photographs Callahan made of Eleanor alone and with Barbara not only suggest the complexity and depth of his feelings for his wife and daughter but, even more significantly, present evidence of his desire to include them in his life’s other great passion: photography. Go further with his work and you’ll continue to see his prodigious talent married to surprising humility. It’s all there, though none of it, like the photograph in this collection, gives itself up easily. Harry Callahan worked hard at his art. His art demands the same of us.Gary M. Green