Harry Callahan
Grasses in Snow, Detroit

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Images(2)

Artist Harry Callahan (American, 1912–1999)American, 1912–1999

CultureAmerican

Titles

Grasses in Snow, Detroit

Date1943

MediumGelatin silver print

DimensionsImage: 6 15/16 × 9 7/16 in. (17.6 × 24 cm)
Sheet: 7 15/16 × 9 15/16 in. (20.2 × 25.2 cm)

Credit LineBequest of Morgan Garwood

Object number2014.104

Not on view

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Department

Photography

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionAlthough self-taught, Harry Callahan was among the most influential post-war American teachers of photography, first at the Institute of Design in Chicago from 1946 to 1961, and then at the Rhode Island School of Design where he established the photography program. Whether photographing landscapes, city scenes and pedestrians, or studies of his wife Eleanor and daughter Barbara, Callahan maintained a simplicity of line, as in the calligraphic blades of grass shown here. He worked in both black-and-white and color, exploring different techniques like multiple and extended exposures, collage, and extreme contrast printing that exemplify the experimental philosophy and formal abstraction of modernist photography.
ProvenanceMorgan Garwood, New York; bequeathed to MFAH, 2014.
Exhibition History“A Critical Eye: Mid-Century American Photographs from the Morgan Garwood Collection,” The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, July 23–November 2, 2014.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

verso top left in pencil "Grasses in snow / Detroit 1943"
top right "EM95"

bottom right below image and verso top right in pencil "Harry Callahan"

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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