Dirty Harry

Last weeks televised biopic about Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz was a big success for the Lifetime network. It's not surprising that a movie about these two would make for good television drama. They were both dramatic, ego maniacal, narcissistic, driven, talented, insecure and, in the eyes of the mainstream populace, "eccentric." Of course there are many other art world / photography world couples who found it difficult to work together while keeping their clothes on. It's unlikely though that the lives of all of them will have contained the requisite drama to be suitable material for future biopics. So, in assuming my typical contrarian stance, I thought why not celebrate one of the more seemingly quiet, and less "dramatic", but very often naked, couples of photography; Harry and Eleanor Callahan. As far as I know there aren't that many naked pictures of Harry Callahan, or Alfred Stieglitz for that matter, floating around. But you can be damn sure that they were taken. Perhaps this would make for an excellent book project for some industrious individual? Nudes of photographers who are well known for making nudes of others. Has that already been done? There is very little about the personal history of Harry and Eleanor Callahan that I know, or care to know. In the end, as with the lives of all artists, the only thing we have to consider of their lives that is of any real and lasting value, to us the public, is the work itself.









All of the above pictures are by Harry Callahan and are of Eleanor Callahan