DeCordova Collects Photographs: Recent Acquisitions
Harry Callahan
"If man wishes to express himself photographically he must understand, surely to a certain extent, his relationship to life," believes Harry Callahan, who tells his life's history through his photographs. Callahan, the first photographer to be chosen to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale and one of the most influential teachers of this century, was raised by farming parents and never received any formal photographic training. He strips the medium down to its basic elements, reducing photography's tonal and spatial range to black, white, and flat. Often connected to abstract painters who rely only on the inherent characteristics of their medium, Callahan's high contrast images explore the patterns, textures, and linear forms seen in nature. These images of nature close-up show Callahan's purity of vision exploring the abstract qualities of familiar subjects. Horse Neck Beach was taken here in Massachusetts and shows the influences of both straight photography and modernist ideas. Callahan records with personal precision the soft texture of the grass while also employing a visual experimentation and practicality that adds a cool formal quality to its tactility.
