PHOTOGRAPHS
Callahan, Harry
U.S. (1912 - 1999)
Eleanor, 1948
1948
Gelatin silver print
9 1/4 x 12 1/2 in. (23.5 x 31.7 cm) image size;11 x 14 in. (28 x 35.6 cm) sheet size
Joseph and Elaine Monsen Photography Collection, gift of Joseph and Elaine Monsen and The Boeing Company
FA 97.218

Harry Callahan began his career making technical photographs for use in the automotive industry. An encounter with Lazló Moholy-Nagy, whose work is also represented in this exhibition, encouraged Callahan to move his family to Chicago in 1946, where he was employed as an instructor in photography at the Chicago Institute of Design. Intimate images of his wife and daughter and pictures of Chicago became the focus of his work. Callahan was particularly interested in the creation of "representational abstractions"-- unmanipulated photographs that are quite abstract because of deliberate play with exposure and framing. Both this picture of his wife Eleanor, who appears as a bold silhouette against a bright light source, and a lone weed, photographed from below against an empty sky, might appear at first as nonrepresentational, but reveal their true motifs on prolonged examination. -- Label copy for The Photographic Impulse: A Critical History of Photography, The Joseph and Elaine Monsen Collection, Cincinnati Art Museum, October 12, 2001 to January 6, 2002.