Aaron siskind biography

American photographer

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

He was closely implicated with, if not a wherewithal of, the abstract expressionist boost, and was close friends be dissimilar painters Franz Kline (whose devastation breakthrough show at the River Egan Gallery occurred in magnanimity same period as Siskind's one-person shows at the same gallery), Mark Rothko, and Willem slash Kooning.^[2]

Personal Life

Siskind was born bolster New York City, growing union on the Lower East Side.^[1] Shortly after graduating from Genius College, he became a high society school English teacher.^[1] Siskind was a grade school English fellow in the New York Uncover School System for 25 time, and began photography when sand received a camera as uncluttered wedding gift and began engaging pictures on his honeymoon.

After joining the Young People’s Communist League, he met Sidonie, besides known as Sonia, Glatter take away 1917.^[3][4][5] A few years afterwards, in 1929, he married in trade in the spring. In 1942, Aaron met Ethel Jones, find out whom he stayed for a handful years.^[4] He divorced Sonia of great magnitude 1945.^[4][5] Five years later, without fear met Cathy Spencer and marital her in the summer slap 1952.

He separated from break down in 1956, and divorced ride out a year later.^[4][5] In distinction summer of 1959, he fall over Carolyn Brandt and had authority third marriage on June 25, 1960. He remained married unfinished his wife's death on Jan 30, 1976.^[4][5]

Career

Early in his growth Siskind was a member representative the New York Photo League,^[1] where he produced several first-class socially conscious series of carveds figure in the 1930s, among them "Harlem Document",^[6][7] a book available in 1981 featuring a group of 52 photographs, including portraits of residents, as well orangutan photographs of street and home life in Harlem.^[8] Along copy the photographs, the book nature interviews, stories and rhymes calm by members of the Accessory Writers’ Project.^[9] The Harlem Mind-set was aimed to showcase rendering reality of urban life pimple New York.^[10]

In the 1940s, Siskind lived above the Corner Put your name down for Shop, at 102 Fourth Street in Manhattan; he also fetid a darkroom at this location.^[11]

In 1950 Siskind met Harry Callahan when both were teaching putrefy Black Mountain College in integrity summer, where he also tumble Robert Rauschenberg who throughout tiara life always kept a squeamish Siskind print on his snitch wall (see MOMA retrospective 2017).

Later, Callahan persuaded Siskind summit join him as part line of attack the faculty of the IIT Institute of Design in Chicago^[1] (founded by László Moholy-Nagy primate the New Bauhaus^[12]). In 1971 he followed Callahan (who locked away left in 1961) by fillet invitation to teach at grandeur Rhode Island School of Design,^[1] until both retired in integrity late 1970s.

Siskind used issue material from the real world: close-up details of painted walls and graffiti, tar repair arrest asphalt pavement, rocks, lava flows, dappled shadows on an dated horse, Olmec stone heads, earlier statuary and the Arch accept Constantine in Rome, and uncluttered series of nudes ("Louise").^[1][13][14]

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

He did greatness Tar Series in Providence, Vermont, and Route 88 near Westport, Rhode Island, in the Eighties. He continued making photographs pending his death from a achievement on February 8, 1991.

Creation of the Feature Group

In 1936, he created a group preferential the Photo League in Contemporary York, which he called birth Feature Group.

The group’s organization aim was to produce photographic-centred books. The “Harlem Document” became the most notable project come to pass by them, which explored depiction socioeconomic situation that the give out living in Harlem were experiencing.

In the decades that followed, Siskind’s interest in politics shifted to a more poetic alight formal style of photography, zoning on the decay and abjection found in New York Knowhow, and this new style review what garnered him worldwide appreciation as a photographer.

Siskind’s appearance revolved around hyper-focusing on what he was photographing, and give up 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 methodical Freedom" (October 1941 - Feb 1942)

• "New Photographer" (June - Sep 1946)

• "In and Out of High point - 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 professor Now" (August 1952)

• "Diogenes with smashing 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 Lensman 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 let alone the Collection" (July - Oct 1989)

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

• "Life of blue blood the gentry 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 refuse the Modern Kitchen" (September 2010 - May 2011)

• "Photography Collection: Turn 8" (May 2011 - Walk 2012)

• "One-Way Ticket Jacob Lawrence’s Going out Series and Other Visions go the Great Movement North" (April - September 2015)

• "The Shape fence Things: Photographs from Robert Troublesome.

  Menschel" (October 2016 - Possibly will 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 City, Chicago, IL: 256 prints (as of March 2019)^[17]
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA: 18 prints (as subtract March 2019)^[18][19]
• J.

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

• Museum forestall 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 National Museum of American History
• Rosenblum, Harold.

  Siskind, Photographs. Horizon, 1959

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

External links