Exploring Nature With Great Imagination
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
One of the biggest photographic shows in New York City is “Harry Callahan: Nature” at the Pace/MacGill Gallery. It isn’t big because of the number of prints in the exhibition — there are only 12 black and white pictures — and it certainly isn’t big because of their size — the largest are only 8-inches-by-5-inches, and many are considerably smaller. It is big because the talent is big, the ambition is enormous, and the results fill our imaginations with wonder.
Harry Callahan (1912–99) was 26 years old and working in the automobile industry when he first got interested in taking pictures. Three years later, in 1941, he attended a series of lectures Ansel Adams delivered at the Detroit Photo Guild, and the possibilities photography offered for artistic expression opened up before him. He elected to devote himself to photography; he was so talented that by the end of the decade his work had been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art.
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