From Library Journal
This excellent collection of Callahan's photographs accompanies a national tour of his work. Curator Greenough's (Robert Frank: Moving Out, LJ 10/15/94) decision to arrange the images chronologically works well to illustrate both the themes central to the photographer's aesthetic and his development as an artist. From early experiments using multiple exposures and light painting to the most recent color cityscapes, Callahan has sought to explore photography's potential. He often returned again and again to the same subject in a quest for yet a new way to "see" it via the camera. Now in his eighties, Callahan is a 20th-century master of American photography who places the highest value on the process of self-realization through image-making rather than on any individual photograph or series of photographs. His life's work stands as convincing testimony to this ideal. This retrospective will be a fine addition to public and academic photography collections.?Kathy J. Anderson, Indiana Univ., BloomingtonCopyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Photographer Callahan has been at the top of the list for half a century (he had his first one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1948), and because his pictures have been so individual, so elegant, so purely seen, they are as fresh today as ever. The plainspoken Callahan decided early that photography could be the medium for "some set of values that I am trying to discover and establish as being my life." He has never focused on public themes, however, but on familiar landscape and one particular woman, his wife, Eleanor. Inspired as a young man by the spectacular images of Ansel Adams, Callahan nevertheless did not require sublime landscape as material. His visual poetry has come more often from a few blades of grass or a barren city street. A pure photographer, concerned with what he calls "the standard photographic problems" --focus, contrast, selection, motion, and multiple exposure--Callahan has maintained remarkable consistency of vision as well as a most individual voice. This book, cataloging a major retrospective exhibition, is the broadest overview of the art and the man. Even collections with much Callahan material (there is no dearth--he is well documented) should add this summative, definitive volume. Gretchen Garner

From Book News, Inc.
Catalogue for an exhibition organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and scheduled to travel to a number of cities during 1996 and 1997. Unlike other exhibitions of Callahan's work, this one organizes his photos chronologically, rather than by subject, describing the growth of his visual life from its genesis in Detroit in the early 1940s, its flowering in Chicago in the late 1940s and 1950s, and its maturation in Providence and Atlanta in the years thereafter. Greenough's essay discusses his artistic vision. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Review
"'Photography is an adventure just as life is an adventure,' Callahan has stated. 'If man wishes to express himself photographically, he must understand, surely to a certain extent, his relationship to life.' Looking then at this adventure, this remarkably clear and straightforward life, the pictures, every one of them, tell the story. Harry Callahan is his work. And therein lies his legend."--Arno Rafael Minkkinen


Book Description
Boldly innovative and technically experimental, Harry Callahan (1912-1999) used double exposures, color, extreme contrast, and wide-angle photography to create lyrical, highly personal images. He was celebrated as a photographer of nature, the city, and women - often using his wife, Eleanor, for a model. Throughout his five-decade career, he quietly but consistently explored new ways of looking at and presenting the world. First published by Bulfinch in hardcover to accompany a major Callahan exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in 1996, this elegant examination of the central themes in Harry Callahan's work is an essential volume for longtime fans and an invaluable introduction for those new to his work.

About the Author
Harry Callahan (1912-1999) was one of the twentieth century's most influential photographers. Sarah Greenough is curator of photographs at the National Gallery of Art, and has written several books about photography.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Known for his boldly innovative explorations of his everyday life as well as the natural and urban landscape, Harry Callahan is a giant in the world of photography. This remarkable book, which includes more than 100 beautifully reproduced photographs, traces Callahan's career from the early 1940s to the present day and illuminates the connections between his subject matter and his constant experimentation. Callahan has consistently explored new ways of looking at the world around him - from high-contrast photographs of trees silhouetted against snow, to double exposures of his wife's nude figure merging into landscapes, to minimal abstractions - but he has used these experiments to reveal his relationships to the world around him. As a teacher at the Institute of Design in Chicago and the Rhode Island School of Design, he has influenced generations of younger photographers - and will continue to influence the art of photography for decades to come.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal