Harry Callahan's Work at the George Eastman House

I chose to examine the 91 pieces (silver gelatin prints all) of Harry Callahan’s catalogue at the George Eastman House’s digital collection. Harry Callahan was a 20^th-century American photographer and my teacher’s teacher, and I have a strong affinity for his work. The Eastman House’s collection contains his urban and rural shots, images of his wife Eleanor, and street shots of strangers, reminding me why I loved his images so deeply years ago.

The George Eastman House website is a simplistic and efficient dream to photo hunters who seek to browse rather than conduct explicit searches, and it took me no time at all to find their impressive number of finding aids and digitized images. There is no mystery regarding the access points to photographs; users simply click on links that lead them to the manner in which they would like to search for photographs, either by photographer, subject, or format. The site itself is not pretty or fancy; it is strictly functional, but what it lacks in aesthetics, it makes up for in usability.

I sought Callahan’s work by his name. Each photographer in the Eastman House’s extensive list has four links next to her name leading users to an Introduction (containing the photographer’s biography), a Checklist (containing a thumbnail of each image in the collection as well as acquisition and identification information for each piece), Thumbnails (a layout of the images without any metadata), and an Index (a list of the photographer’s name, the catalog number of each print, and the title of each).

             The Introduction contains Callahan’s biography, highlighting his connections to other influential photographers as well as his teaching appointments. It also contains an explicit breakdown of each of the images in the Eastman House’s collection, explaining where the images were made, the time frame from which the originated, and the subject matter. The Introduction also tells users from where the images were acquired, and contains the identity of the archivist who compiled the introductory material.

            The Checklist is a quick and dirty way to gain knowledge of rudimentary metadata for each image. The images are arranged in a list format with introductory information next to each. When one clicks on the images, he is led to the full explanation of each, including acquisition information, subject headings, copyright, catalogue number, bibliographic information, title, and photographer.

            The Thumbnails section, where the images are arranged on the page without any text, leads users to the same page with the extended metadata. For those users who want to simply be swept away in the visual richness of each photographer without the distraction of cataloguing information, this is the ideal way to start searching for images.

            The Index section is the inverse of the thumbnail portion of the site; it is, I should think, intended for users who are already familiar with a photographer’s catalogue. By listing the images’ titles, year, and catalogue number, the site presents a bit of a crap shoot for those perusing works without prior knowledge of the contents. There is no visual representation of the images, and each link must be followed to see to which image each description belongs.

            Although the site is set up simply and is incredibly easy and intuitive to use, it has some drawbacks. Among those is the manner in which each photographer’s images are arranged. With Callahan, one can detect very distinct movements and subject fascinations, yet the images are utterly randomly placed on the site with no regard to subject matter, location of the shoot, or date the images were made. I found this lack of organization thoroughly distracting and frustrating; images that I knew should have been placed near other specific images for the reasons listed above were scattered about seemingly randomly. Additionally, the information present in the metadata is arranged in such a way that it may be particularly frustrating for non-archivists or untrained researchers to glean useful information.

            Another drawback of the site is that there is no way of searching the images. One needs to know what she is looking for (or must rely on dumb luck), and must gain access to images via one of the Eastman House’s menus, rather than being able to search by photographer or subject matter. Additionally, the menus for subject matter are excruciatingly specific, and do not link to other areas of the web site.

            For example, the Subject section has such specific headings as Nineteenth Century Balloons and New Guinea Stereo Views, but nothing of the simple words and phrases that may lead a user back to, say, the works of Harry Callahan. The subjects used in Callahan’s images simply do not appear in the Subjects list, making it impossible for a user to find her way to his images without seeking them directly by his name.

            All told, the Eastman House web site and finding aids are a solid way to get to images—if the user knows what she seeks or if she is not particular about where she winds up and what photographs she examines. It is much more useful to those already familiar with a photographer or his works, as well as to those who can dissect metadata written in a skeletal and sometimes inconsistent fashion.