The Start of a Brilliant Career

Harry Callahan, Chicago (Trees in Snow), circa 1950. One of ten photographs from The Photographer and the American Landscape. Photographs New York.

In 1963, John Szarkowski, the newly appointed photography curator at The Museum of Modern Art assembled his first major exhibition for the institution, The Photographer and the American Landscape. Modest in scope — showcasing the work of only 19 photographers — the exhibition attempted to identify the through-line in American landscape photography from the 19th century to the present day. The exhibition received positive reviews in the New York Times and in Aperture magazine, and Szarkowski’s brilliant curatorial career was underway.

Exhibition catalogue from The Photographer and the American Landscape, 1963.

Included in the exhibition was a suite of ten subtle but remarkable photographs by Harry Callahan which are reemerging in Phillips’ April 4 Photographs auction for the first time since they were purchased in 1983. Works by Callahan had been included in earlier MoMA exhibitions organized by curator Edward Steichen, but these landscape photographs as curated by Szarkowski presented something different. Indeed, the ten Callahan photographs, as they were arranged on the Museum’s walls, formed a cohesive exhibition within the larger show. Hung by Szarkowski from dark to light, the photographs’ sequence could be interpreted as a demonstration of the ten-zone grey scale. More important, however, was the progression of the images, left to right, from recognizable plant forms to ones nearing abstraction, with the famous Trees in Snow, Chicago, at the mid-point — a new contextualization of this important photograph.

Installation view of 9 of the 10 Harry Callahan photographs from The Photographer and the American Landscape.

The photographs were loaned to the museum by Callahan himself. After their return to him, Callahan sold them to George H. Dalsheimer, proprietor of Baltimore’s G. H. Dalsheimer Gallery. While Dalsheimer dealt primarily in painting, prints, and sculpture, he was an early and influential photography collector. In 1988, the Baltimore Museum of Art would acquire his photography collection, where it remains one of the jewels of their photography holdings. In 1983, Dalsheimer sold the suite to a young collector named Thayer Tutt.

Harry Callahan, Detroit (grasses in water), 1941. One of ten photographs from The Photographer and the American Landscape. Photographs New York.

Thayer Tutt was studying geological engineering at Princeton in the 1970s when he had the good fortune to take a class with the eminent photo historian Peter C. Bunnell. Tutt became smitten with photography and signed up for another class with Bunnell. In 1976, Tutt purchased his first photograph, a study of the temple at Karnak, Egypt, by the 19th century British photographer Francis Frith. This acquisition initiated his brilliant career as a collector. Bunnell was his initial guide to the young world of collecting photography.

Jerry Uelsmann, Peter C. Bunnell.

It was Bunnell who took Tutt to his first photography auction and, there, introduced him to the pioneering gallerist Maggi Weston, owner of Weston Gallery in Carmel, California. Ms. Weston, in turn, introduced Tutt to Andrea Stillman (then Andrea Gray) who worked as an assistant to Ansel Adams. Through Ms. Weston and Ms. Stillman, Tutt had direct access to a remarkable array of photography, from 19th century masters to early work by Adams and Paul Strand. It was a great time to buy, Tutt recalls fondly, “you didn’t have to be rich to collect photography.”

Thayer Tutt and Ansel Adams in the photographer’s home, Carmel, California.

In 1983, Ms. Stillman approached Tutt regarding a suite of ten photographs by Harry Callahan that had hung on the walls of The Museum of Modern Art two decades earlier. When Tutt saw the prints in person he was amazed by their fine print quality and condition and agreed to purchase them. Ms. Stillman facilitated the transaction between Dalsheimer and Tutt. Until recently, the photographs hung on the walls in Tutt’s home in Colorado. Now this stellar group is up for auction and ready to hang again in a new home.