Harry Callahan’s photography was a deeply personal response to his own life. He chose for his subject matter his immediate surroundings: the streets, scenes and buildings of the cities in which he lived, and, most enduringly, his wife, Eleanor Knapp. Callahan met Eleanor on a blind date in 1933 when both of them worked for Chrysler in Detroit, she as a secretary and he as a clerk in the parts department. They married three years after meeting. Callahan took up photography shortly after, becoming a member of the Chrysler Camera Club in 1938 and then the Detroit Photo Guild. From the very start of his career Eleanor was Callahan’s central model and muse.
Callahan’s photographs are highly experimental and visually daring, regularly using blurring and multiple exposures. Eleanor’s presence is often an anchor in an otherwise abstracted composition. The inanimate objects and angles of the outside word echo the soft shapes of her body. Although some works show only individual body parts, most show Eleanor as a whole. She frequently faces away from the camera, in a strong silhouette. In many of the portraits she is placed against the landscape, but in the interiors Callahan plays brilliantly with dramatic contrasts of light and dark.
In this particular interior study from 1948, the angles of the room seem to radiate from Eleanor’s shape. The large window reiterates the verticality of her body, and although her torso is dwarfed by the presence of the window, she remains the focus of the composition. The primary concerns of the photograph are light, texture and composition, and Callahan offers no clear narrative content. He repeatedly referred to these studies of Eleanor as ‘intuitive.’ They reflect Callahan’s lived experience of both his wife and the environment which they shared
(By Thea Gregory)