Lincoln Park, Chicago c. 1948

Harry Callahan made this photograph, "Lincoln Park, Chicago," with his camera sometime in the middle of the 20th century. It's a small, square picture of a post and chain. The post is soft and gray, and the chain almost dances along its edges in inky black, caught between the post and the white nothingness of the background. I like to imagine Callahan, camera in hand, his eye zeroing in on this unassuming corner of a park. Maybe it was the play of light, maybe the contrast, maybe it was just the way the chain seemed to cling to the post. When you look at this, do you see a simple object, or something more? Callahan, like all artists, was in conversation with the world and the other artists around him. He’s having a dialogue with abstraction – what can a picture mean? What kind of feeling can it hold? What does the world look like when we pay close attention?