Harry Callahan
American, 1912–1999
Alley, Chicago
INV-1138
Harry Callahan
American, 1912–19991948
Alley, Chicago
Harry Callahan American, 1912–1999 →photographygelatin silver (developing-out-paper) pr
Date
1948
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
Image/paper: 34.4 × 25.2 cm (13 9/16 × 9 15/16 in.); Mount: 50.6 × 40.6 cm (19 15/16 × 16 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
The Art Institute of Chicago
Printing multiple times from the same negative, Harry Callahan created a kaleidoscopic vision of a Chicago alley. Pedestrians walk by on spotlit platforms that seem to float in space, while fire escape ladders ascend like scaffolding into the sky. Callahan made this photograph not long after arriving in the city, having accepted an invita-tion from the artist László Moholy-Nagy to teach at the New Bauhaus (now the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology).
Callahan combined Moholy’s emphasis on abstraction and technical innovation with his own view of photography as a means of personal expression. His daily search for revelatory views of Chicago yielded elegant and experimental pictures.
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