Researching Begins - Harry Callahan.

The Photographs of Harry Callahan that I am particularly interested in are a series of  landscape photos donated to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. They cover five decades of his work.


Callahan was inspired by Ansel Adams but was interested in the minutiae of his local landscape. His photos dwell on specific details of the landscape and become abstract in their attention to simplicity. The detail that he achieves renders the simplest things complex and forces the viewer to see that which he would not normally notice.


His choice of subject matter seems mundane and he often will photograph it twice.



Fig. 4 and Fig. 5 from 'Detroit 1942'.

 

For example the photos above are both of the Leaf on a section of snow. One was clear and pronounced whilst the other , though similar looks more abstract. His photos seem to invite the viewer to really "see" the subject. He offers us the ordinary and the overlooked and allows us to see it with fresh eyes. As John Szarkowski wrote, " He has demonstrated that the most accessible subjects, approached with the most transparent of Techniques, can be made new again each day by precision of feeling".

Callahan adopted Adams ethic of clarity in his own work. Adams was a founding member of the F/64 group, named for the small lens aperture, the result of which was called " Straight Photography". The idea being that the final photograph would be complete from every aspect without being manipulated afterwards. This raises photography to the realms of a pure form of art. He achieved this with a view camera purchasing first a 8x10" camera and then a 4x5" camera. The larger film allowed better image quality and for each negative to be processed individually.

At first glance his photos do not seem to offer us much to see, but on reflection they allow us to see worlds within worlds. His photos of Leaves, Plates 5, 6, and 7 Chicago appear to be the same, but upon observation they contain both similarities and differeces. The viewer is drawn into the texture, shape and the play of light and dark. Unfotunately I can only find one of these photographs to upload.

Plate 6. Chicago, 1950.

Another of his inspirations was Stieglitz and his cloud pictures titled " Equivalents" - which rather than being literal were more mood forming. If you look at Callahan's series "Ansley Park, Plates 34-37, shot looking upwards at trees and thier branches, you are drawn to the line and form rather than the knowledge that these are trees.

Ansley Park, Plates 34-37 1991.

I do have a fascination of taking pictures looking upwards, especially with trees. I think I have a few similarities in my own work to that of Harry Callahan's 'Ansley Park' photos. By transforming my own digital images into black and white there probably wouldn't be much difference except I tend to single out one tree.

Here are some of my own images.