A Self-Taught Artist, Innovator and Teacher

The National Gallery of Art commemorates the life and work of the photographer Harry Callahan (1912 – 1999) with the exhibit Harry Callahan at 100 that runs through March 4, 2012. Some one hundred photographs cover the breadth of his career from his experimental work in the 1940’s through his color photos from the 1990’s. Callahan, considered one of the most innovative photographers of the 20^th century, created a significant body of work in both black and white and color and was an influential teacher of photography at two important art schools.

He began taking photographs when he was a twenty-six year old shipping clerk at Chrysler Motors and for him it was a passionate hobby. He joined several camera clubs and in 1941 Ansel Adam conducted a workshop in Detroit that Callahan attended. He said it “completely set me free.” Later Callahan would meet with Alfred Stieglitz several times. As Stieglitz had made Georgia O’Keefe a model for many portraits, Callahan would do the same with his wife Eleanor, making her one of his most important subjects, especially in the early years. In Eleanor, Chicago of 1949 she looks like a water nymph of ancient mythology with her her eyes closed, her head just above the water, with her long flowing dark hair. Eleanor, Chicago of 1953 makes use of strong light and dark contrast with his wife standing in shadows in front of a telephone pole, bisecting the empty street behind.

Callahan’s photography received some notice early on, and although he had never received any formal training in photography, in 1946 he was hired by the former Bauhaus teacher Laszlo Moholy-Nag to teach at the Institute of Design in Chicago. He became head of the department in 1949 and remained there until 1961.  He then went to the Rhode Island School of Design to establish the photography department there where he continued to teach until 1971. He would say, “Teaching taught me how little I know and it forced me to think. I had to teach to get an education.”

 One of his early experimental techniques was to try to create images with double exposures by making one exposure and then to making another over the same piece of film without being able to see the first. He also experimented early on with color and later embraced the new medium and continued making striking images in color with a focus on urban scenes. Many of his black and white images can be seen here, and a few of the color ones here.

This video clip is from an interview he did in 1981. The montage at the beginning has photographs of many photographers with several of Callahan’s in the middle. The ones at the end all are all his.

This is one of the more interesting quotes from the exhibit  “As a child, my mother taught me religion in the moral sense, and early on I was motivated unconsciously by it. Later, I felt that I wanted to do something that would benefit humanity. I wanted something important, something spiritual in my life. And as these feelings developed, I found that my spiritual enrichment came through art. It was then that I realized I wanted to be an artist. That’s it. You see I learn slowly, but every day I seem to learn more.”