Harry Callahan

Harry Callahan has been recognized as one of the greatest artists in the history of photography. With purity and eloquence, his life’s work balances description and abstraction, personal expression and universal meaning, the simple and the sublime. Callahan’s photographs are about his life, and about the visual pleasure of living.

The photographs of Harry Callahan form the foundation of the present Hallmark Photographic Collection. In 1964 Hallmark Cards purchased 14l prints from the artist after his large exhibition at the Hallmark Gallery in New York City. Work by other major photographers was quietly gathered over the years, and today the collection includes more than 700 prints by some 40 photographers. These works are being shared with local and national audiences through an active exhibitions program that celebrates the art of photography. The collection includes many of the acknowledged masters of 20th century photography, such as Edward Steichen, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Edward Weston, Lewis Hine, Berenice Abbott, Imogen Cunningham, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Andre Kertesz, to name a few. And, with a present total of 170 prints, the Callahan archive forms the keystone of the entire collection.

Sourced from: Keith F. Davis, ‘Introduction,’ in Centre for Creative Photography & Harry Callahan, Harry Callahan photographs from the Hallmark Photographic Collection, Randall Hensley, 1986, p. 3.