Aaron Siskind (American, 1903-1991)

In the early 1930s, Aaron Siskind was active in the New York Worker's Film and Photo League, which promoted awareness of class struggle and the need for social reform. His photographs of Harlem's social and political conditions were published in 1981 as Harlem Document: Photographs, 1932-1940. By 1945, Siskind was producing metaphoric, abstract images based on discarded objects and had established ties to the artists of the New York School. He taught with Callahan at Black Mountain College (1951-1971) and the Rhode Island School of Design (1971-1976). Siskind's straight close-ups of fragmented lettering, graffiti, peeling paint, and other minutiae revealed the poetry in the commonplace.
- Jill Alikas St. Thomas

Selected Bibliography
Chiarenza, Carl. Aaron Siskind Pleasures and Terrors. Boston: A New York Graphic Society Book/Little, Brown and Company, 1982.

Siskind, Aaron. Places-Aaron Siskind Photographs. Carlisle, Mass.: Pentacle Press, 1976.

Coke, Van Deren, and Du Pont, Diana C. Photography a Facet of Modernism. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1986.

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