Providence c. 1969

Harry Callahan made this gelatin silver print, "Providence", sometime in his life, with light and shadow. He wasn't chasing perfection; it's more like he was trying to feel his way through the scene, which, as an artist, I totally get. Look at how the buildings loom, almost pressing in on the street below. It’s all about texture here, the rough brick against the smooth sky. That traffic light, right in the center, feels like the linchpin, the one still point in a world of motion. The eye is drawn upwards, in a series of interlocking shapes. The print has that silvery sheen, like a memory trying to surface. Callahan reminds me a bit of Walker Evans, both finding poetry in the everyday. But where Evans is all about capturing a certain kind of stoic realism, Callahan is chasing something more elusive, a mood, a feeling.