Harry Callahan

I'm having a week of revisiting the photographer's that inspired me so much as a student. Today, Harry Callahan. His simple, beautiful work so evident of love for his wife Eleanor.

Eleanor, Chicago, 1949

Eleanor, Chicago, 1949

Eleanor, 1947

Eleanor, 1947

Eleanor, Chicago, 1948

Eleanor, Chicago, 1948

Eleanor, Chicago, 1949

Eleanor, Chicago, 1949

Here's a little about him as a Photographer:

Harry Callahan ( 1912 – 1999) was an influential twentieth century American photographer.

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Callahan began teaching himself photography in 1938.  A talk given by Ansel Adams in 1941 inspired him to take his work seriously.  In 1946 he was invited to teach photography at the Institute of Design in Chicago by László Moholy-Nagy. He moved to Rhode Island in 1961 to establish a photography program at the Rhode Island School of Design, teaching there until his retirement in 1977. Callahan left almost no written records—no diaries, letters, scrapbooks or teaching notes. His technical photographic method was to go out almost every morning, walk the city he lived in and take numerous pictures. He then spent almost every afternoon making proof prints of that day's best negatives. Yet, for all his photographic activity, Callahan, at his own estimation, produced no more than half a dozen final images a year.

He photographed his wife and daughter and the streets, scenes and buildings of cities where he lived. Even prior to the birth his daughter showed up in photographs of Eleanor's pregnancy. 

Callahan's work was a deeply personal response to his own life. He encouraged his students to turn their cameras on their own lives, leading by example. Callahan photographed his wife over a period of fifteen years, as his prime subject. Eleanor was essential to his art from 1947 to 1960. He photographed her everywhere - at home, in the city streets, in the landscape; alone, with their daughter, in black and white and in color, nude and clothed, distant and close.