Harry Callahan: Morocco

Description

One of the foremost American photographers of the twentieth century, Harry Callahan explored the expressive possibilities of both color and black-and-white photography from the outset of his career in 1938. Following his retirement from teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1977, however, he decided to dedicate his practice exclusively to the color medium and pursue travel to foreign locales. The twenty-three photographs in this publication, taken in Morocco in 1981, are the product of Callahan's shift to a strictly chromatic palette and demonstrate his continued interest in the visual intrigue of the everyday urban landscape and the passersby who occupy it. Depicting his familiar subjects of architectural facades, random patterns of street activity, and isolated figures lost in thought, the images transcend Morocco's exoticism by exploring the formal and pictorial potential of the country's environment. The photographs that excite me are photographs that say something in a new manner; not for the sake of being different, but ones that are different because the individual is different and the individual expresses himself. Harry Callahan

Harry Callahan (1912-99) began his career as an amateur photographer. Following a workshop with Ansel Adams in 1941 and a meeting with Alfred Stieglitz in 1942, Callahan decided to completely devote himself to the medium. In 1946 he accepted Laszlo Moholy-Nagy's invitation to teach at Chicago's Institute of Design, a position he left in 1961 to chair the Photography Department at the Rhode Island School of Design. Since his first one-person show in 1947, Callahan's work has been the subject of over sixty solo and group exhibitions worldwide, eighteen of which were presented at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.