Harry Callahan Exhibition and Catalog

Tim Parkin

Amateur Photographer who plays with big cameras and film when in between digital photographs.

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"I know what you're thinking: 'Did he use two sheets of film or only one?' Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I've kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a Deardorff 8x10, the most powerful camera in the world, and would blow your D800E clean away, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do you, punk?"
- filed under "Things Harry Callahan might not have said"

So I guess you know I'm not talking about *that* Harry Callahan here but to most people and many photographers, you mention the name and this is what comes to mind. Which is sad in a way as Harry Callahan was undoubtedly one of the most important photographers of the post war period. To put things in a little context, the start of the century saw Weston, Adams and the like eschew the 'creativity' of pictorialist style in order to use the camera to record untainted reality. The difference in Harry Callahan's approach to photography was that he used the camera as a tool to investigate his own ideas and environment. He found a small set of subjects, ideas and techniques and worked them repeatedly to find out where they took him. This introspective approach to photography produced some very novel, modernist work.