Harry Callahan: Eleanor - Tapa dura

This is the definitive publication of Harry Callahans photographs of his wife, Eleanor. For almost two decades from the early 1940s to the early 1960s Eleanor was a primary focus of Callahans work, resulting in many of his most acclaimed and influential photographs. This publication features the finest and rarest examples of his Eleanor images. This in-depth presentation of a single subject over many years provides a new understanding of both Eleanor as a subject and Callahans ongoing exploration of the creative potential of photography. Over the years Callahan photographed his wife in countless ways: nude and clothed, indoors and outdoors, in public parks and city streets, at the beach, in a tent, in the woods, among sand dunes, and in the privacy of the family home. She is shown as a youthful model recorded through pregnancy and young motherhood, and in numerous poses with their daughter, Barbara. These photographs function like an intimate visual diary of a lifestyle and a relationship. They are seldom portraits in the traditional sense of revealing a subjects personality. More than studies of his wife, the Eleanor photographs are central to Callahans life long exploration of photography as a creative medium and the seemingly infinite ways camera and light sensitive materials can depict a single subject.

Julian Cox is Curator of Photography at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.