Alley, Chicago

Photography and Media

1948

Harry Callahan
American, 1912–1999

Printing multiple times from the same negative, Harry Callahan created a kaleidoscopic vision of a Chicago alley. Pedestrians walk by on spotlit platforms that seem to float in space, while fire escape ladders ascend like scaffolding into the sky. Callahan made this photograph not long after arriving in the city, having accepted an invita-tion from the artist László Moholy-Nagy to teach at the New Bauhaus (now the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology).

Callahan combined Moholy’s emphasis on abstraction and technical innovation with his own view of photography as a means of personal expression. His daily search for revelatory views of Chicago yielded elegant and experimental pictures.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Photography and Media

Artist: Harry Callahan
Title: Alley, Chicago
Place: United States (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Made 1948
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Inscriptions: No markings recto or verso
Dimensions: Image/paper: 34.4 × 25.2 cm (13 9/16 × 9 15/16 in.); Mount: 50.6 × 40.6 cm (19 15/16 × 16 in.)
Credit Line: The Art Institute of Chicago
Reference Number: 1959.885

Travis, David and Elizabeth Siegel. 2002. “Taken by Design: Photographs from the Institute of Design, 1937–1971,” Exh. cat. Art Institute of Chicago/University of Chicago Press. p. 96, cat. 24, pl. 61.

Art Institute of Chicago, “Foreign Exchange: Photography between Chicago, Japan, and Germany, 1920-1960,” May 4, 2024–Sep. 9, 2024.
Art Institute of Chicago, “Distant Relations,” May 8–July 18, 1993. (David Travis)
Art Institute of Chicago, “Taken by Design: Photographs from The Institute of Design, 1937–1971,” March 2–May 12, 2002; traveled to San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, July 20–October 20, 2002; and Philadelphia Museum of Art, December 7, 2002–March 2, 2003. (David Travis and Elizabeth Siegel)

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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