Harry Callahan: The Photographer at Work

A revelatory new study of the twentieth-century master Harry Callahan, offering insights into his often experimental process and his contribution to the history of photography

Harry Callahan (1912-1999) was one of the most influential photographic artists of the twentieth century. A master of modernist experimentation, Callahan explored a range of subjects--from landscapes to city streets to portraits of his wife--and techniques throughout his career.

Beautifully designed and produced, this book focuses on understanding how Callahan worked--both his day-to-day photographic explorations and his resulting fifty-year career in photography. Exploring the rich contents of the Harry Callahan Archive at the Center for Creative Photography, the authors look at how Callahan's choice of subjects and visual ideas emerged from deliberate and improvisational processes, and how such processes might be revealed with archival materials such as negatives, transparencies, proof prints, sequential ordering, and variant printings. This close investigation of Callahan's individual and experimental approach to materials in turn leads to a larger consideration of his relationship to seemingly contradictory strains in American visual culture of the twentieth century.

Reproducing a host of previously unpublished images and documents, this volume juxtaposes select artifacts--such as contact sheets and variants--with final images to explicate Callahan's life in and influence upon photography. Harry Callahan: The Photographer at Work will offer a rare glimpse into the creative process of an important and fascinating artist.

Published in association with the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson

Exhibition Schedule:

The Art Institute of Chicago (June 24 - September 24, 2006)

Center for Creative Photography (January 27 - May 7, 2006)

Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego (May 20 - September 2, 2007)

Author: Britt Salvesen
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 12/15/2005
Pages: 192
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 3.32lbs
Size: 12.06h x 9.62w x 0.93d
ISBN: 9780300113327


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 04/15/2006 pg. 74
Choice 07/01/2006 pg. 1984

About the Author

BrittSalvesen is curator at the Center for Creative Photography. John Szarkowski is director emeritus of the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. He has written over twenty-five books on photography, including a 1976 publication on Callahan.

This title is only available via back order