Harry Callahan ― The Street

Harry Callahan (1912-1999) was one of the most influential American photographers of the second half of the twentieth century.

Callahan’s highly original oeuvre involved a wide-ranging exploration of photographic techniques including experimentation with exposures, a strong sense of line and form, and light and darkness. A crucial addition to Callahan’s critical presence and leading to a deeper understanding of the photographer’s greater impact on the techniques and styles of modern photography,Harry Callahan: The Street explores the artist’s lesser-known works, focusing on his black-and-white and colour street photographs.

Bringing together documentary work, still life and staged photographsmany of his wife, whom he photographed throughout his lifethis important review of a house name sheds a new found light on the Callahan’s personal and pioneering approach.

The featured works are from a collection of 556 photographs that were gifted to the Vancouver Art Gallery by the Montreal-based Larry and Cookie Rossy Family Foundation. The collection is an exemplary representation of Callahan’s practice, featuring work from throughout the artist’s 60-year career. This gift marks the largest photography donation in the Vancouver Art Gallery’s history and is by far the most important collection of Callahan’s work in Canada, and the second largest public collection in the world. These important additions to the gallery’s already remarkable photography collection will be unveiled to the public in an exhibition planned for 2016.

Together with the publication of Harry Callahan: The Street, this exhibition marks the 40th anniversary of the photographer’s renowned 1976 retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. To date, Harry Callahan’s work has been featured in over 60 solo exhibitions at institutions and galleries around the globe.

Harry Callahan (1912-1999) was one of the most influential photographic artists of the twentieth century. A master of modernist experimentation, Callahan explored a range of subjects--from landscapes to city streets to portraits of his wife--and techniques throughout his career.

Grant Arnold is currently Audain Curator of British Columbia Art at the Vancouver Art Gallery where he contributes to the gallery’s exhibition and collecting programs. Prior to coming to Vancouver he held positions at the Art Gallery of Windsor and the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon. Over the past thirty years he has organized more than sixty exhibitions of historical, modern and contemporary art. Recent projects have included In Dialogue with Carr: Gareth Moore Allochthonous Window; Spiritlands: (t)HERE: Marian Penner Bancroft Selected Photo Works 1975-2000; Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965-1980 (with Catherine Crowston, Barbara Fischer, Michele Theriault and Vincent Bonin, and Jayne Wark); Ken Lum; Reece Terris: Ought Apartment; Mark Lewis: Modern Time; Fred Herzog: Vancouver Photographs; Real Pictures: Photographs from the Collection of Claudia Beck and Andrew Gruft; Rodney Graham: A Little Thought (with Jessica Bradley and Connie Butler); and Robert Smithson in Vancouver: A Fragment of A Greater Fragmentation.

Arnold holds an M.A. in art history from the University of British Columbia. His writing has appeared in exhibition catalogues, books and journals. He is currently working exhibitions of work by Myfanwy MacLeod, Jerry Pethick and John Vanderpant.