Collage

A self-taught photographer from Detroit, Harry Callahan became one of the most influential educators and practitioners of photography in America in the 20th century. Callahan built a body of work that was at once humanistic and restlessly experimental, ever pushing the boundaries of photographic conventions and materials. Callahan often set himself a challenge within strict technical or formal parameters—photographing, for example, female pedestrians on the street from a particular distance, or his wife and daughter in a series of posed 8 x 10–inch “snapshots.” In 1956–57 he experimented with collage, cutting up pieces of paper and fashion and advertising photographs, arranging them like a jigsaw puzzle in his studio, and photographing them as one would a still life. Callahan produced the collages in black and white and in color; the numerous faces and hands in this color composition give an impression of a mass of flesh.