Harry Callahan

mounted, signed in ink and with a 'Photography Collection of the Polaroid Corporation' label, with typed credit and title and accession information in ink, on the reverse, 1950, printed no later than 1958

Acquired from the photographer in December 1958 for the Library Collection

Other prints of this image:

Photographs: Harry Callahan (Santa Barbara: El Mochuelo Gallery, 1964), pl. 84

Harry Callahan (The Museum of Modern Art, 1967), p. 65 and rear cover

Sarah Greenough, Harry Callahan (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1996), p. 73

Katherine Ware, Elemental Landscapes: Photographs by Harry Callahan (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2001), pl. 4

Britt Salvesen, Harry Callahan: The Photographer at Work (Center for Creative Photography and Yale University, 2006), pl. 21

David Travis and Elizabeth Siegel, Taken by Design: Photographs from the Institute of Design, 1937-1971 (The Art Institute of Chicago, 2002), p. 62

This remarkable early print, filled with details and a wide range of gray tones, is on paper with a very slight surface sheen. It is in generally excellent condition. There is a tiny portion of emulsion that is lifting slightly at the lower left edge of the print. When examined in raking light, a slightly raised mounting bubble is barely visible in the lower left quadrant. The reverse of the mount is attached to the overmat with four pieces of cloth tape. The reverse of the mount is slightly soiled.
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.

The photograph by Harry Callahan offered here was purchased by Ansel Adams on behalf of the Polaroid Corporation for inclusion in a group of photographs that would come to be known within Polaroid as 'the Library Collection.'   In the spring of 1956, Adams and Edwin Land began to discuss the idea of expanding Polaroid's growing collection of images beyond those made with Polaroid technology; as Adams wrote in a memo to Land in March of that year,

'I am much pleased that this idea has been brought up . . . I have always felt that Polaroid should interest itself in photography-in-general, thereby associating itself with the art in its entirety and avoiding "compartmentization." The association of fine Polaroid-Land pictures with the best photographs in other media will only enhance the value and importance of the Polaroid process.'

Adams was given approximately $1,200 for the first year's acquisitions, and he proceeded with care and deliberation.  The collection would officially be named the 'Photography Collection of the Polaroid Corporation,' and the letterpress label placed on the mount of each photograph carries this title.  As the prints were originally stored and installed in Polaroid's library, however, the collection came to be known, simply, as the Library Collection.

Callahan was one of a number of contemporary photographers whose work Adams considered exemplary of 'true excellence and achievement.'  Others ranked high by Adams, and whose prints he purchased for the Collection, were Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, Margaret Bourke-White, Laura Gilpin, Brett Weston, Minor White, Aaron Siskind, William Garnett, Walter Chappell, and Pirkle Jones, all of whose work is offered in the present catalogue.  Paul Strand was among the very first on Adams's initial 'want list,' but, regrettably, Strand's prices, in the context of Adams's budget, turned out to be prohibitive.

In a series of memos from 1956 and 1957 to Land, his assistant Meroë Morse, and Polaroid's librarian Jacquelin Sykes, Adams gives detailed instructions for labeling, handling, displaying, and storing the Library Collection photographs.  The superb condition of many of the Library Collection prints is due to Adams's foresight in this regard.  Of special interest to photographs collectors and historians is the meticulous recording on each label of the print's title, as well as the month and year the photograph entered the Collection.  The titles and printing dates for several of the classic images offered here, including Callahan's Trees in Mist, are the most definitive statement of each photographer's interpretation of the negative at the time the print was acquired by Polaroid.