Wide Lux Sand Picture, Cape Cod, Massachusetts c. 1977 - 1979

This photograph of a Cape Cod beach was captured by Harry Callahan, using a camera. Here we see a meeting of textures: granular drifts of sand give way to smooth, flat expanses. It's as if the beach itself is painting a picture, grain by grain, shaped by the elements. I can almost feel the wind as it sweeps across the dunes, carving those delicate lines into the sand. Callahan seems to be showing us how the earth makes abstract art all on its own, with no human intervention. I wonder what Callahan was thinking when he framed this shot? Did he see a landscape, or an abstract composition? Maybe a bit of both. Callahan's work always has this tension between representation and abstraction. His art reminds us that every artist works within a longer conversation, each riffing off the last, discovering new ways of seeing and being.