Eleanor, Chicago c. 1953

This photograph, "Eleanor, Chicago" by Harry Callahan captures his wife with a view of mid-century urban America. Callahan seems to have caught his subject with the camera as a way to get to know her. I’m wondering if Eleanor knew she was being photographed; the sense I get is that she might have been standing there talking to him before he raised the camera and took a picture. Her face is central to the composition, emerging between the pole and the heavy textures of the built landscape behind. I know that feeling of needing to know someone. This photograph feels like a way to approach the unknowability of another person and catch something of their presence, an attempt at intimacy between the photographer and the subject. It strikes me as a way of seeing, thinking, and experiencing the world. What do you think?