[Camera Movement]

Early in his career, Harry Callahan’s innovative approach to photography broke with the medium’s customary role of depicting reality, instead capturing forms that resulted from the camera’s mechanical vision of movement and time in experimental works entitled Camera Movement. Standing in a darkened room, Callahan moved his camera with the shutter open while photographing a flashlight and literally drawing with light. The light was small and focused, allowing him a great degree of control in the gesture to create elegant, calligraphic lines that strike a balance between spontaneity and restraint.