Lila Reid, 2020

Callahan’s photograph, “Eleanor, Chicago” (1948),¹ depicting his wife, is both intimate and disquieting. The photograph includes a closed window, a female figure’s back, and a cropped view of another room, as we see the corner of a table and chair. The light pouring in from the window and the separate room not only illuminates the dark wall of the photograph, but also Eleanor’s form. It is not immediately clear what the subject of the photograph is, the window or the figure. Compositionally, both seem unique in comparison to where we expect them to be—the window, perhaps higher up and farther from the center, and the woman, closer to the foreground and not cropped. Their placement makes the viewer relate them equally to each other, rather than focusing on the figure with the window as an element of the background. The window being closed and the nude woman with her back facing us, connotes the feeling of privacy, almost as if we are walking in on a moment we shouldn’t. The use of light and dark is also powerful in this photograph, as the vertical highlights from the window parallel with the highlights of the figure.