Barbara 1952

Harry Callahan made this photograph, Barbara, using gelatin silver print. It’s a study in grey tones, think Agnes Martin, but with a camera! The texture of the print is so smooth, almost like skin, but it captures the rough, natural world. Look how the light catches the tips of the tall grass in the foreground, it almost gives the sense of a pencil mark making its way across the surface of a page. In the center is a little figure, seemingly dwarfed by the trees, yet still standing. Callahan's work often explores the relationship between people and their environments, a bit like what's going on with Minor White at this time. He finds beauty in the everyday, transforming the mundane into something magical, a meditation on seeing itself.