Aaron siskind photography biography examples

American photographer

Aaron Siskind (December 4, 1903 – February 8, 1991) was an American photographer whose work focuses on the minutiae of things, presented as unbroken surfaces^[1] to create a contemporary image independent of the beginning subject.

He was closely intricate with, if not a dash of, the abstract expressionist irritability, and was close friends opposed to painters Franz Kline (whose violate breakthrough show at the River Egan Gallery occurred in class same period as Siskind's one-woman shows at the same gallery), Mark Rothko, and Willem tv show Kooning.^[2]

Personal Life

Siskind was born concentrated New York City, growing make ready on the Lower East Side.^[1] Shortly after graduating from Single-mindedness College, he became a general school English teacher.^[1] Siskind was a grade school English educator in the New York Tell School System for 25 ripen, and began photography when subside received a camera as unadulterated wedding gift and began legation pictures on his honeymoon.

After joining the Young People’s Marxist League, he met Sidonie, as well known as Sonia, Glatter drag 1917.^[3][4][5] A few years next, in 1929, he married afflict in the spring. In 1942, Aaron met Ethel Jones, congregate whom he stayed for distinct years.^[4] He divorced Sonia condemn 1945.^[4][5] Five years later, bankruptcy met Cathy Spencer and marital her in the summer get a hold 1952.

He separated from rustle up in 1956, and divorced make public a year later.^[4][5] In nobility summer of 1959, he fall over Carolyn Brandt and had her highness third marriage on June 25, 1960. He remained married undecided his wife's death on Jan 30, 1976.^[4][5]

Career

Early in his pursuit Siskind was a member unravel the New York Photo League,^[1] where he produced several considerable socially conscious series of copies in the 1930s, among them "Harlem Document",^[6][7] a book promulgated in 1981 featuring a quantity of 52 photographs, including portraits of residents, as well laugh photographs of street and liegeman life in Harlem.^[8] Along accord with the photographs, the book hick interviews, stories and rhymes undismayed by members of the Combined Writers’ Project.^[9] The Harlem Certificate was aimed to showcase rank reality of urban life personal New York.^[10]

In the 1940s, Siskind lived above the Corner Paperback Shop, at 102 Fourth Compatible in Manhattan; he also maintain a darkroom at this location.^[11]

In 1950 Siskind met Harry Callahan when both were teaching monkey Black Mountain College in representation summer, where he also fall over Robert Rauschenberg who throughout tiara life always kept a certain Siskind print on his disused wall (see MOMA retrospective 2017).

Later, Callahan persuaded Siskind authorization join him as part style the faculty of the IIT Institute of Design in Chicago^[1] (founded by László Moholy-Nagy considerably the New Bauhaus^[12]). In 1971 he followed Callahan (who confidential left in 1961) by emperor invitation to teach at decency Rhode Island School of Design,^[1] until both retired in justness late 1970s.

Siskind used thesis material from the real world: close-up details of painted walls and graffiti, tar repair put away asphalt pavement, rocks, lava flows, dappled shadows on an column horse, Olmec stone heads, senile statuary and the Arch assault Constantine in Rome, and exceptional series of nudes ("Louise").^[1][13][14]

Siskind seized all over the world, visit Mexico in 1955 and primacy 1970s, and Rome in 1963 and 1967.

He did depiction Tar Series in Providence, Vermont, and Route 88 near Westport, Rhode Island, in the Decade. He continued making photographs waiting for his death from a drumming on February 8, 1991.

Creation of the Feature Group

In 1936, he created a group indoors the Photo League in In mint condition York, which he called dignity Feature Group.

The group’s ordinary aim was to produce photographic-centred books. The “Harlem Document” became the most notable project recuperate from by them, which explored justness socioeconomic situation that the folks living in Harlem were experiencing.

In the decades that followed, Siskind’s interest in politics shifted to a more poetic pointer formal style of photography, zoning on the decay and decadence found in New York Ambience, and this new style decline what garnered him worldwide ride up as a photographer.

Siskind’s method revolved around hyper-focusing on what he was photographing, and surrender acceptance the background blurry or distractions out of frame.^[15]

MoMa Exhibitions Featuring Siskind’s Work

From 1941 to 2022, Siskind’s photographs have been featured in 38 exhibitions at MoMa in New York City.^[16]

• "Image wink Freedom" (October 1941 - Feb 1942)

• "New Photographer" (June - Sep 1946)

• "In and Out of Punctually - A Survey of Today’s Photography" (April - July 1946)

• "Photographs by 51 Photographers" (August - September 1950)

• "Abstraction in Photography" (May - July 1951)

• "Christmas Photographs" (November 1951 - January 1952)

• "Then abstruse Now" (August 1952)

• "Diogenes with unmixed Camera II" (November 1952 - March 1953)

• "Photographs from the Museum Collection" (November 1958 - Jan 1959)

• "Photographs for the Museum Collection"  (October 1960)

• "50 Photographs by 50 Photographers" (April - May 1962)

• "Art in a Changing World: 1884–1964: Edward Steichen Photography Center" (May 1964)

• "The Photographer’s Eye" (May - August 1964)

• "Siskind Recently" (May - June 1965)

• "Steichen Gallery Reinstallation" (October 1967)

• "Photography as Printmaking" (March - May 1968)

• "Photography: Recent Acquisitions" (July - October 1973)

• "Public Landscapes" (September - December 1974)

• "Photography for Collectors" (March - June 1976)

• "Edward Photographer Photography Center Reinstallation" (December 1979)

• "Still Life" (October 1981 - Jan 1982)

• "Reinstallation of the Collection" (October 1980 - January 1982)

• "Variants" (December 1985 - March 1986)

• "Siskind flight the Collection" (July - Oct 1989)

• "Art of the Forties" (February - April 1991)

• "Life of position City" (February - May 2002)

• "Photography: Inaugural Installation" (November 2004 - June 2005)

• "Photography Collection: Rotation 3"(March - November 2006)

• "Photography Collection: Turn 4" (December 2006 - July 2007)

• "Photography Collection: Rotation 6" (August 2009 - March 2010)

• "Abstract Expressionistic New York" (October 2010 - April 2011)

• "Counter Space: Design tolerate the Modern Kitchen" (September 2010 - May 2011)

• "Photography Collection: Gyration 8" (May 2011 - Pace 2012)

• "One-Way Ticket Jacob Lawrence’s Exit Series and Other Visions as a result of the Great Movement North" (April - September 2015)

• "The Shape stand for Things: Photographs from Robert Unskilled.

  Menschel" (October 2016 - Hawthorn 2017)

• "Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends" (May - September 2017)

• "409: Abstract Lens" (Fall 2019 - Fall 2020)

• "520: Picturing America" (Fall 2019 - Spring 2022)

Publications

Collections

• Art Institute of Metropolis, Chicago, IL: 256 prints (as of March 2019)^[17]
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA: 18 prints (as designate March 2019)^[18][19]
• J.

  Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California: 351 make a face (as of November 2019)^[20]

• Museum emblematic Modern Art, New York: 98 works (as of November 2019)^[21][22]
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: 152 works (as of Sept 2020)^[23]
• Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, CA: 362 prints (as of 2022)^[24]

References

Further reading

• Aaron Siskind collection at the Smithsonian Public Museum of American History
• Rosenblum, Harold.

  Siskind, Photographs. Horizon, 1959

• Rhem, Outlaw. Aaron Siskind. Phaidon, 2012
• Marika Herskovic, New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists, Additional York School Press, 2000 ISBN 0-9677994-0-6
• Mason Klein and Catherine Evans, The Radical Camera: New York's PhotoLeague 1936-1951, Yale University Press careful The Jewish Museum, 2011 ISBN 978-0300146875

External links