Harry M. Callahan Livres

Hardcover edition featuring the work of noted photgrapher, Harry Callahan. From the "Aperture Masters of Photography" series.

"Callahan did somehow arrive quickly at the sure knowledge that the function of his own work was to describe not the public issues of the great world, but the interior shape of his private experience." John SzarkowskiNature is a selection of Harry Callahan's nature studies, 12 intimately scaled prints that the artist assembled into a series in the early 1990s, herein reproduced as beautiful tipped-in plates. Over the course of a career that spanned six decades, Callahan made nature of one his foremost themes, and continually researched new ways of seeing trees, weeds, snow and surf. Ranging in date from 1941 to 1991, these images are typical of the artist's innovative approach to these subjects, as well as of his intention to "capture a moment that people can't always see." Some images give a striking description of surface detail on natural forms, while others reduce those forms to compelling abstract patterns. Consistent throughout the series is the technical refinement that distinguishes Callahan's style and that has secured his place among the foremost American photographers of the twentieth century.

“It might be said that the subject of Callahan’s photographs is photography, and that his world exists essentially as a formal problem.” John Szarkowski Harry Callahan was one of the most respected and influential American photographers of the modern era. He was a master of traditional genres such as portraiture, landscape, architecture and nature studies, but also experimented with new ways of using the medium. One of Callahan’s favorite themes was the repeating pattern, whether in multiple reeds reflected on a lake‘s surface or the rows of windows on a building‘s facade. While lesser known than some of his other work, Callahan’s collages demonstrate an intense interest in and profound understanding of the process of photographic seeing. His collages are rigorous yet playful explorations of a visual world created in his studio. The subject is either faces cut from magazines or rectangles cut from black or white paper. Callahan then photographed the collages pinned to his studio wall on his 8x10 inch view camera, one leading to the next to create this never before published series.