PHOTO:Harry Callahan -The Street
Harry Callahan was one of the most influential photographers of the 20th Century. His photography is exploratory rather than evolutionary. He chose a subject, photographed it for a while, left it, did other things, and then returned to it, usually from a changed perspective. Chronology is of little importance to understand his work.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Vancouver Art Gallery Archive
The exhibition “Harry Callahan: The Street” at the Vancouver Art Gallery features 150 black & white and color images, from the donation of 600 Callahan’s photographs from the Larry and Cookie Rossy Family Foundation. The exhibition focus on Callahan’s interest in the street as a social space, an aspect of his artistic production that is not as widely known as others. It covers the entire span of Callahan’s career, beginning with the in-camera montages produced in Detroit in the early ‘40s and concluding with the multi-part works he made along Peachtree Street in Atlanta during the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. It showcases the full range of techniques Callahan employed, from complex multiple exposures in black and white to richly coloured, single-exposure dye transfer prints. Callahan in 1938, was working at the Chrysler Company in Detroit and joined the Chrysler Photo Club, and learned camera basics from a friend. He soon became dissatisfied with hobby photography and the sentimental pictorialism that club members favored. Wanting something more, he found it in 1941 when Ansel Adams lectured at the club. Adams told the club to not to view photography as would-be painting, but in its own terms and limitations. He taught Callahan how to make prints and, above all, inspired him to become a photographic artist. as Callahan later told “Set me free”. In 1946 László Moholy-Nagy and Arthur Siegel invited Callahan to join the staff of Chicago’s Institute of Design, where from 1949 to 1961 he was head of the photography department. From 1961 until 1973 he helped develop a photography department at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. Basically, Callahan merged Adams’ purism with Moholy’s experimentalism to create a new, radically inventive kind of photography. He would choose a subject, such as nature or city street life, photograph it in a variety of ways, and then experiment with extreme contrast, double exposure, all-white and all-black prints, and much else. In the late 1970s Callahan became interested in the aesthetic possibilities of colour film. He did not print his colour slides until 1978, when he became the first photographer chosen to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale. By 1980 he was using colour almost exclusively. The Museum of Modern Art in New York City presented a major retrospective exhibition of his work in 1976. In 1996, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.
Info: Curator: Grant Arnold, Vancouver Art Gallery, 750 Hornby Street, Vancouver, Duration: 11/6-5/9/16, Days & Hours: Mon & Wed-Sun 10:00-17:00, Tue 10:00-21:00, www.vanartgallery.bc.ca
