Harry Callahan worked in series that often featured his favored motifs—the city, nature, and his wife Eleanor—from perspectives and through procedures that demonstrated the constant renewal of his gaze. This method responded to a double impulse: Callahan’s belief in the camera’s potential for capturing a new way of seeing reality, and his pursuit of innovation alongside to the medium’s development.

Callahan photographed his wife over the course of 15 years. Most of the photographs were taken between 1947 and 1960 in numerous places, situations, and in many different formats. Eleanor was depicted on the street, in the privacy of their home, and both nude and dressed. She was depicted in vast landscapes, in close-up shots, and from far away, and in both black and white, and color. Callahan’s fidelity to Eleanor as subject allowed him to work with great formal freedom deployed through the use of different photographic techniques and effects.

This series of photographs cannot be interpreted solely as an observation of family intimacy and a means of documenting everyday life; rather, it refers to an eminently visual experience. In other words, it embodies a form of experimentation based on the camera’s possibilities in dialogue with photographic tradition.