La Salle Street, Chicago
1953
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
overall (image): 18.1 x 19.1 cm (7 1/8 x 7 1/2 in.) sheet: 20.32 x 20.64 cm (8 x 8 1/8 in.) mat: 45.72 x 35.56 cm (18 x 14 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of the Callahan Family
Accession Number
2011.95.7
Art Historical Context
Harry Callahan's *La Salle Street, Chicago* (1953) is a captivating gelatin silver print that captures the pulse of mid-century urban America. Measuring 18.1 x 19.1 cm, this intimate black-and-white photograph transforms a bustling Chicago thoroughfare—one of the city's financial hubs—into an abstract symphony light, shadow, and motion. Callahan, a pioneering photographer associated with the Institute of Design in Chicago, elevated everyday street scenes through experimental techniques, blending the precision of documentary photography with modernist abstraction. Created in the postwar era, w...
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...