Harry Callahan, Variations Exhibition at Fondation Henri Cartier Bresson, Paris

I took the opportunity of a couple of days in Paris to visit some of the exhibitions of photography taking place there. The first was this exhibition of Harry Callahan's photography called Variations. Harry Callahan (1912 to 1999) was a self taught photographer who before taking up photography in 1938 was an accountant in the motor industry in Chicago. He viewed his photographs as an art form influenced by personal friendships with Ansel Adams, Edward Steichen and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. He became Professor at the Chicago Institute of Design. Harry specialized in black and white cityscapes, nature, and photographs of his wife Eleanor. The exhibition was a retrospective of his photographs in all categories. His work does not appear to be as well known than these american contemporaries despite recognition from John Szarkowski and Henri Cartier-Breson but I found the photographs interesting as he was succesful despite being a rather quiet and self-effacing character. The prints were quite small most of them being 10 to 20 cms along the longer side.

My observations were as follows.

• The photographs appeared to use natural light, and there was no indication of studio lit subjects (unlike for example the still life photos by Edward Weston).
• Many of the photographs used high contrast to create visual impact. For example, there were a number of abstracts with a few dark parallel lines on a white background, where I believe overhead wires were the subject. I also liked a study of a plant and a photograph of bare trees dark against a white and pale grey background.
• He used black and white to emphasise the visual shapes of nature. For example, there were a couple of photographs of grasses where the shapes of the grass leaves were just visible against a very dark background.
• My first impression of the series of nude photographs of his wife was somewhat disappointed as the high contrast and flat lighting emphasised the outlines rather than the contours of the human form. However, a review of two of these photographs by Martine Ravache, a Parisian photo critic and historian, in "Connaissance Des Arts - Photo 25" took the position that these were landmark photographs. Martine argues that the the photographs should not be viewed simply as a portrait, but as an allegory of a real women, neither beautiful nor ugly, but idealized by the high key treatment.
• Apart from the posed photographs of his wife and daughter, he took few portraits. He took quite a variety of candid street photographs of passers by but he was not comfortable taking interacting directly with people to take their portrait.

His character and photography contrasted significantly with that of Henri Cartier-Bresson (see next blog).