Eleanor, Lake Michigan
1948
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
image: 19.3 x 24.3 cm (7 5/8 x 9 9/16 in.) sheet: 20.3 x 25.2 cm (8 x 9 15/16 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Ann Solomon
Accession Number
2002.148.10
Art Historical Context
Harry Callahan's *Eleanor, Lake Michigan* (1948) is a captivating gelatin silver print, a black-and-white photographic process that was the gold standard for mid-20th-century art photography. Measuring just 19.3 x 24.3 cm, this intimate image captures Callahan's wife, Eleanor, against the vast expanse of Lake Michigan, personal portraiture with elemental landscape. Created in the post-World War II era, it reflects the era's fascination with modernism and everyday transcendence. Callahan, a key figure in American modernist photography, studied and later taught at Chicago's Institute of Design ...
About the Artist
Harry Callahan
Harry Morey Callahan (1912–1999) was a pioneering American photographer whose self-taught ingenuity transformed everyday scenes into profound visual poetry. Born in Detroit, Michigan, he briefly studied engineering at Michigan State University before working at Chrysler, where he joined the company camera club. In 1938, Callahan took up photography as a hobby, but a 1941 lecture by Ansel Adams ins...