New York 1945

Harry Callahan made this photograph in New York, and it’s full of city life as it appears and disappears. Like when you walk around, and things come into focus and then fade away. I'm thinking about the way the light makes the ground look like a stage. What’s going on here? It feels like a play, and these figures are caught in the drama of the everyday, each absorbed in their own world, disconnected and maybe a little lonely. I wonder if Callahan noticed that too? There’s something very human about the way the light and shadows stretch and distort the figures, turning them into almost abstract forms. It reminds me of the way we try to make sense of the world around us, grasping at fleeting moments of clarity in a sea of uncertainty. Callahan is in conversation with the street photographers like Garry Winogrand, and painters too, like Edward Hopper. Callahan seems to say, "I don't know what it all means, but isn't it beautiful and strange?".