In a timely homage to one of America’s paramount photographic pioneers, the National Gallery of Art débuted the Harry Callahan photography exhibit last Sunday, October 3rd. The exhibit commemorates the centenary of Callahan’s birth, and celebrates one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century. In the spirit of reflection, therefore, it is an opportune moment to revisit the history of the genre.

The exhibition at the NGA, located on the ground floor of the West Building and on display through March 4, is simply stunning. Callahan’s portfolio spans nearly six decades of outstanding artistic exploration. Through carefully calculated exposures and with endlessly imaginative compositions, Callahan’s work achieves the near impossible.

Callahan’s focus shifted as his affair with photography deepened, yet the artist never lost his unique touch. Rather, the variety of subjects he illuminated throughout his life benefitted equally from his investigational eye. One of the artists’ earliest subjects was his wife, Eleanor, from when the couple lived in Detroit and Chicago. During this phase, Callahan experimented with shadow and the human form, producing perhaps his most intimate and ethereal work.

Particularly impressive are the progressive techniques Callahan played with as early as the 1940s. Simply put, his techniques precede his time. The Callahan exhibition at the NGA is fundamentally inspiring for the artist’s elusive quality of predating artistic progress. This quality is similarly at the heart of what continues to haunt us in the annals of photography’s masters.

Much like the impassioned backlash from the public at the dawn of Impressionistic painting, the introduction of photography as fine art was met with fierce cynicism. Historically, the photograph was strictly a scientific tool used for documentation. When Giambattista della Porta, an Italian scholar during the Scientific Revolution and Reformation, first popularized the camera obscura though his book “Magiae Naturalis” (Natural Magic) in 1558, the hype over the invention pitted scientists against artists like never before.

Dealt this social climate, the earliest photographers forged an artistic crusade. They forced society to reconsider traditional notions of art and forever changed the public conception of the photograph.

From the start of the 20th century until the outbreak of WWII, a society of bohemian artists in France fueled this artistic revolution. The Montparnasse quartier of Paris was an epicenter of creation and home to progressive photographers, painters, musicians and writers alike.

One such photographer was Gyula Halasz, an immigrant from Hungary. He rose to fame under the pseudonym, Brassaï, after the name of his birthplace. Brassaï is credited as the fist photographer to capture Paris by night. His goal was to channel the nocturnal influences of the City of Lights with a narrow focus on empty parks, nightlife, and lovers.

Brassaï wandered the streets of Paris, sometimes all night, and is said to have measured the length of his exposures in terms of cigarettes. He would look at the particular scene he wished to shoot and say, “This shot will take one premium cigarette and two cheap ones,” premium cigarettes lasting longer than most.

Another hugely influential photographer was Man Ray, born Emmanuel Radnitzky. Man Ray and his contemporaries experimented with unexpected angles, multiple exposures and optical distortion, sparking the first Surrealist photography movement.

It was in 1925 that Man Ray was featured in the first Surrealist exhibition at the Galerie Pierre alongside contemporaries such as Jean Arp, Max Ernst, André Masson, Joah Miro and Pablo Picasso

Man Ray is also known to have had had an affair with another revolutionary photographer of the 20th century, Lee Miller, after taking her on as an assistant at his studio in Paris.

Enchantingly intertwined with Man Ray’s story, Lee Miller’s personal history is equally impressive. Lee Miller began her career as a model for Vogue. Her beauty was her power and she used it as a tool for professional advancement, modeling for her colleagues. After establishing herself as a surrealist photographer, she began a career in photojournalism during WWII. As the official war correspondent for Vogue, she worked closely with David E. Scherman, a corresponded for Life Magazine. Their collaboration on a picture Scherman took of Miller in the bathtub of Adolf Hitler’s house remains one of the most powerful examples of the duality of photography—it’s capacity to exist as both documentation and powerful artistic expression.

The evolution of photography remains as relevant today as ever before, as the history of the photograph paved the way for modern photographic expression. The Callahan collection at the NGA celebrates the chronic power of the genre to captivate the public, to foster the continuity of artistic expression, and to quietly and collectively present a relatable portrait of human emotion.