Weeds in Snow, Rhode Island c. 1965

Harry Callahan made this photographic print, Weeds in Snow, Rhode Island, using gelatin silver. It’s a landscape, but it’s so pared back. It’s like a drawing, or a notation. The eye traces a few dark, spidery lines across a flat, white ground. Little jabs of ink or charcoal which describe the barest details of weeds, just poking through the snow. The emulsion shimmers, almost, but there’s no depth, just a shallow field. Callahan was interested in the way a photograph could be both a very faithful record and a total abstraction. He made so many images of his wife, Eleanor, and the urban landscape. This is different. There’s a delicacy here, a sense of lightness, even humour, that reminds me of Agnes Martin’s grids, or Cy Twombly’s scribbles. It’s about the beauty of humble things, I guess, and the way a simple gesture can say so much.