Harry Callahan

mounted to illustration board, signed, titled, and dated by the photographer in ink and with the El Mochuelo Gallery label, with typed credit, title, date, and 'page 213' on the reverse, matted, 1957, printed no later than 1964

Acquired by the present owner from Paul M. Hertzmann, Inc., San Francisco, 1992

Santa Barbara, El Mochuelo Gallery, 1964

Photographs: Harry Callahan (Santa Barbara: El Mochuelo Gallery, 1964), pl. 123 (this print)

Another print of this image:

Harry Callahan (The Museum of Modern Art, 1967), p. 57

This photograph is on double-weight paper with a glossy surface. It is in excellent condition. When examined closely, faint age-appropriate silvering can be seen in the dark areas at the print's edges. In raking light, a tiny indentation can be seen in the upper left corner which is almost certainly a spot of the photographer's original retouching. As is typical of the photographs included in Callahan's El Mochuelo exhibition (and reproduced in the accompanying book), this print is mounted to thick illustration board with a smooth white surface and backed with green paper. There is a small indentation in the center of the mount's left edge, and a small loss to the top paper ply along the upper right edge. On the reverse, there are some minor losses to the El Mochuelo Gallery label.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

This photograph was shown in the seminal solo exhibition of Harry Callahan's work at El Mochuelo Gallery, Santa Barbara, California, in 1964. Not only was this print part of the exhibition, it was the very image used for reproduction in the book that accompanied the exhibition, Photographs: Harry Callahan (Santa Barbara: El Mochuelo Gallery, 1964), the first monograph published on Callahan's work.  The mount has the El Mochuelo Gallery letterpress label, with the typewritten plate number from the book, on the reverse. 

By the early 1960s, Callahan was well into his photographic and teaching career, and his work had been the subject of a number of  solo exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago (1951), Black Mountain College (1951), Kansas City Art Institute (1956), George Eastman House (1958), and the Hallmark Gallery (1964), as well as numerous group exhibitions, including many at The Museum of Modern Art.  The major themes of his work were well underway at this point: studies of his wife and daughter Eleanor and Barbara, landscapes, and urban scenes.  It is surprising, given the maturity of his work and his exposure in a wide range of exhibitions, that his photographs had not yet been published in a dedicated book until the El Mochuelo volume.

The short-lived El Mochuelo Gallery was founded by Wayne Thompson and David Van Riper.  Thompson and Van Riper had intended Photographs: Harry Callahan to be the first in a series of photographic monographs.  While the series never materialized, the Callahan book Van Riper and Thompson produced is impressive, even by today's standards, for the high quality of its reproductions and the sophistication of its layout.  Callahan himself was responsible for sequencing the 126 reproductions into the book's five sections.  Photographs: Harry Callahan still stands today as the most complete collection of the photographer's work in book form, and is one of the most sought-after of modern photography books (cf. Andrew Roth, et al., The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century, pp. 168-69). 

In the book's artist statement, Callahan wrote, 'I do believe strongly in photography and hope by following it intuitively that when the photographs are looked at they will touch the spirit in people.'