Callahan, Harry Morey
Callahan, Harry Morey,
1912–99, American photographer, b. Detroit. Self-taught, he began taking pictures (1938) as a hobby and, inspired by the work of Ansel AdamsAdams, Ansel,1902–84, American photographer, b. San Francisco. He began taking photographs in the High Sierra and Yosemite Valley, with which his name is permanently associated, becoming professional in 1930.
..... Click the link for more information. , began to produce professional-quality photographs in the 1940s. His mature work is said to mingle the precision of Americans like Adams with the experimentalism of Europeans like Lázló Moholy-NagyMoholy-Nagy, László
, 1895–1946, Hungarian painter, designer, and experimental photographer. He turned to art after studying law. While living in Berlin he was one of the founders of constructivism, experimenting with photograms and translucent materials.
..... Click the link for more information. . From his first efforts, Callahan portrayed certain typical subjects drawn from his own daily life experience. His black-and-white city streetscapes and rural landscapes combine the commonplace with the starkly abstract, exploring contrasts of sunlight and shadow, tone and texture, static buildings and hurried passersby, while his many lovingly distinctive portraits of his wife and daughter are extremely personal and intimate. He sometimes used multiple exposures, and experimented with color slide film in the 1940s, again making color images from 1977 on. An influential figure in modern photography, he taught at Chicago's Institute of Design (1946–61) and the Rhode Island School of Design (1961–77).