Providence 35

Aaron Siskind

An AbEx photograph by American photographer Aaron Siskind, done in Providence, Rhode Island in the 1986. Apart from the printed edition of 30.

Photographer, writer, and educator Aaron Siskind was born in New York City on December 4, 1903. He earned his BSS in literature from City College in 1926 and began teaching high school English, which he would continue to teach until 1947. In 1930 he discovered photography after recieving a camera as a wedding gift, and soon discovered a passion for the medium, joining the Film and Photo League, which was dedicated to improving social conditions through photography.

Among his most well known early works are the social realist photos he took for the his 'Harlem Document' project (1937 to 1940), as well as 'Dead End: the Bowery'; 'Lost Generation: the Plight of Youth Today'; and 'Sixteenth Street: a Cross-Section of New York', among others. Soon after, his focus became more avant-garde, and a series of abstract images, titled 'Tabernacle City', caused a rift between the other members and himself. He left the League at this time, choosing to acquaint himself with New York's leading abstract artists of the time, including Frank Kline and Mark Rothko.

Of note regarding Siskind's take on abstraction was his focus on the details of urban structures to create unrelated compositions, using portions of three dimensional objects to create a flat, two dimensional images, removing the objectivity from the subject. Details of graffiti, cracks in sidewalks and tar-repaired streets, and other everyday objects taken out of context became something new through Siskind's lens. This work was embraced by Harry Callahan and Robert Rauschenberg, his fellow teachers at Black Mountain College in the summer of 1950, and before long he was invited by Callahan to join the faculty of the Illinois Institute of Design - founded by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy as the New Bauhaus - where he became head of the Photography Department in 1959.

In 1951 Elaine de Kooning wrote the introduction for Siskind's show at the Charles Egan Gallery where he frequently exhibited. He would publish his first of several books on subject of photography in 1959.