Dimensions
225 x 273 x 24mm
More important than what Henry has done is when he did it. When he began his career, photography was widely considered a trade and not a fine art. Prior to the 1970s, even great photographers were not considered artists, except perhaps by themselves and a few others.
They worked for hire: Henry Cartier-Bresson was a photojournalist; Diane Arbus shot fashion and magazine stories; Irving Penn, fashion and advertising. Even Ansel Adams ran a portrait studio early in his career and was a Polaroid consultant. Few museums had serious photography collections, and there were only a dozen or so photography graduate programs in the US. Many colleges, including the University of Chicago, where Henry studied history, didn’t teach photography at all. Photographic education was limited to trade schools, apprenticeships, camera clubs, and the military.
All this changed in the 1970s, about the time Henry was beginning his career. The 1976 exhibition Photography Until Now at the Museum of Modern Art signaled the acceptance of photography in a wider art world. That said, the photographer (now artist) had to work to make a living and had to figure out a career path. Henry’s first love was history, which led him to make a variety of documentary photographs. These “art” projects were personally driven, not assigned. It was Harry Callahan, with whom he studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, who told him to “Shoot what you love. Even if you get bad photographs, you’ll have a good time.”
