Untitled (Chop Suey) c. 1950

Curator: Harry Callahan's gelatin silver print, *Untitled (Chop Suey)*, circa 1950. There's a wonderful, almost wistful quality to this photograph of a Chicago restaurant facade. Editor: It feels… melancholy? All those reversed signs in the windows create this strange doubled world. Plus, there's a deliberate composition that makes it more than just a snapshot. Curator: Exactly! Callahan wasn’t just documenting a scene; he was using the street as a stage. The Ashcan School influence is palpable. There's the honest, unglamorous portrayal of city life. And you see the layered reflections—the city reflected back at itself. Editor: So, it's this play of depth, light, and shadow, creating this hazy effect... like a memory. I get the sense of Callahan searching for beauty in the everyday. It has to be more than documentation given Callahan was associated with a modernist aesthetic. Curator: Absolutely. He isolates the beauty through rigorous composition, the contrast of textures—the starkness of the window displays against the blurry reflections. And, he was experimenting, finding abstraction in urban chaos, anticipating Robert Frank, maybe? Editor: There’s something about the neutrality. Callahan doesn’t seem to judge. He captures a specific place in time with this…almost clinical gaze. It feels… objective. Almost sterile. What do you mean by rigorous composition? Curator: Well, consider where he places the facade in the picture plane, he is showing both symmetry and asymmetry. It is balanced in its presentation and it offers many layers within. As to sterile... yes. Maybe sterile wonder? Editor: I like that, sterile wonder. Looking at *Untitled (Chop Suey)* I realize I was seeing it more through feeling, and you brought context and purpose to Callahan's methodology. Curator: That is the lovely dance of viewing art. My clinical to your immediate sensation creates something else entirely. I walk away seeing its purpose renewed.