Eleanor, Chicago c. 1951 - 1980

Curator: Let’s discuss Harry Callahan’s "Eleanor, Chicago," a photograph taken sometime between 1951 and 1980. What strikes you initially? Editor: It feels intimate and staged simultaneously. You have Eleanor, the nude figure, seemingly in an artist's studio, but the canvases feel as much like a backdrop as they do artworks in their own right. What interests you most about this piece? Curator: The materiality of it. Consider the processes involved. Callahan wasn't simply capturing a scene. He was controlling the means of production of the image itself: the camera, the film, the development process, each step a conscious act of labor that transforms his subject into something more. It becomes a manufactured item. What kind of statement do you think Callahan makes about the art world by blurring those lines? Editor: That's interesting... he positions his wife Eleanor within the context of artistic production. But is it really challenging the lines between "high art" and everyday labor? He's still photographing a nude, which feels…traditional? Curator: Traditional subject matter, yes, but think about how the *place* of labor impacts the final object. Is this fine art, documentation, or pornography? What elements are included or omitted and why? He reframes the consumption of the female figure by placing her amongst the apparatus and traces of artistic labor. What does that context suggest about our role as consumers of this photograph? Editor: So it's not *just* a nude. It’s about labor and presentation of that image and how it relates to what the art actually is. The tension makes it something other than either the purely artistic or merely the reproductive. Curator: Exactly. He's asking us to think critically about what we value and why in the processes that construct art, its circulation, and its interpretation. Editor: I’ll definitely consider that when I revisit his other work!