Harry Callahan: The Photographer at Work [Hardcover]

Britt Salvesen (Author), John Szarkowski (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 2005

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Reproducing a host of previously unpublished images and documents, this volume juxtaposes select artifacts—such as contact sheets and variants—with final images to explicate Callahan’s life in and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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Bringing together images from a career spanning 60 years, this catalogue commemorates Harry Callahan's singular photographic achievement. Among the volume's 120 plates are photographs of weeds and grasses arranged against the sky, women captured anonymously on street corners, intimate portraits of the photographer's wife, seemingly unremarkable streetscapes and snapshot-like outdoor portraits of Callahan's wife and daughter. Rarely iconic but always unexpectedly eloquent, Callahan's compositions reveal the idiosyncratic approach he developed after emerging from the influence of modernist giants Stieglitz and Adams, and retain a lively, searching quality befitting the work of a man who once said, "I think that when you get a style, you're sort of dead." Essays by John Szarkowski, former director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art; and Salvesen, curator at the Center for Creative Photography, make clear that the serendipitous, almost offhand elegance of Callahan's oeuvre came as the result of a lifelong commitment to the daily practice of photography, and contact sheets, slides, proof prints and negatives from the Callahan archives attest to his rigorous work ethic. With enough archival material and previously unpublished work to distinguish it from existing books on the artist, this work serves as both an introduction to the photographer and an essential volume for Callahan devotees.
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Review

“. . .this work serves as both an introduction to the photographer and an essential volume for Callahan devotees.”—Publishers Weekly

(Publishers Weekly )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (December 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300113323
• ISBN-13: 978-0300113327
• Product Dimensions: 12.1 x 9.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #563,517 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars more of the same, May 5, 2007

By 

David Akiba (boston) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Harry Callahan: The Photographer at Work (Hardcover)

Ever since Harry Callahan died in 1999 I have been waiting for a major evaluation of his undeniably historic contribution to twentieth century photography. "Harry Callahan: The Photographer at Work." is another of several tantalizing introductions to Callahan's oeuvre that fails to dig deep enough and wide enough to make much of an impact on those passingly familiar with his body of work. There are only a very few photographs that have not been published before.

I want a catalogue raisonne or as close to it as the holders of his photographs can aspire to. I want a significant analysis of the imagery that goes far beyond the oft repeated "magical, mysterious, intuitive" pieties of most current writing including the book under review. I want a writer with a vivid imagination to sit down with all the grass photographs, all the Eleanor photographs, all the Cape Cod photographs and say something that allows the viewer to appreciate the psychological depth of Callahan's imagery.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful biography of a gifted artist, August 29, 2007

By 

Andrew Ilachinski (Springfield, VA USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Harry Callahan: The Photographer at Work (Hardcover)

This is a wonderful book on the creative life of one of the 20th century's most creative photographic artists. It is so much more than a "mere" biography.

What sets this biography (which a generous sampling of Callahan's work) apart from other books in this genre, is its elegant focus on the creative aspects of photography. In discussing Callahan's dedication to constant experimentation, choice of subject matter, his visual approaches to a particular shot, selection of themes and improvisations, sequential ordering, and the all important print process, the book provides a rare invaluable resource to the inner reflections of an artist at work (and play). Callahan's lifelong body of work is testament to the fact that an artist need not travel to the ends of the earth to find beauty; beauty is not just in the eyes of the beholder, but in the dedication and loving attention to craft and creative experimentation in one's backyard.

0 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Really nice photographer, March 30, 2008

By 

William Carroll - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Harry Callahan: The Photographer at Work (Hardcover)

Great book of Harry Callahan's photographs. I needed to buy this book to use in a paper i wrote about him for my history of photography class, and it came quickly to me, of which i was hoping for because i needed to do my essay soon. Perfect stuff